Update Details: A new Health and Safety update has been issued on Working at Height. The full article has been emailed to subscribers with the H&S updates preference and is available as a PDF in the Update Service folder.
Why Working at Height Matters
Falls from height are the single biggest cause of workplace fatalities in the UK and a major cause of serious injury, and most happen during routine jobs rather than specialist high-risk work. Work at height covers any work where a person could fall a distance liable to cause injury, including work on roofs, from ladders and stepladders, and near edges and openings.
What the Working at Height Update Covers
The update sets out a practical approach to managing work at height, starting where every job should start: with a risk assessment. It works through the order of priority the law sets out, to avoid working at height where the job can be done from the ground, prevent falls where work at height is unavoidable, and minimise the distance and consequences of a fall where some risk remains.
It then looks at choosing access equipment to suit the task and its duration, where ladders fit and their limits for anything beyond short, low-risk work, and the pre-use checks and recorded inspections that keep access equipment safe.
Getting the Full Working at Height Update
The full update, along with the supporting documents and risk assessments for managing work at height, is provided to subscribers as part of the update service.
Health and Safety updates are issued as part of the ISO and legal update service and the content is also saved to the Update Service folder (this is in the alphaZ subscribers section) where they can be downloaded in pdf format and used for providing topic-specific training or for sending out as an update to workers.
