Working at height
Contents
Your legal responsibility
You must do all that is reasonably possible to prevent anyone falling from a height. When you carry out your risk assessment, you must look at all work carried out at a height where there is a risk of falling. This includes work done at or below ground level.
Make sure you do the following:
- Avoid unnecessary people working at heights.
- Where this can't be avoided, use work equipment or other measures to prevent the risk from falls.
- Where you can't eliminate the risk of a fall, use work equipment or other measures to minimise the distance and consequences of a potential fall.
What law applies?
- The Work at Height Regulations 2005
- The Work at Height Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2005
The regulations cover many aspects about working at a height, including:
- Personal fall protection (such as work restraints and rope access)
- Means of access
- Working platforms
- Ladders and step ladders
How to keep employees working at height safe
When work at height is involved, you're legally responsible to make sure that:
- It's properly planned and organised
- It takes account of weather conditions that could risk health and safety
- Staff involved are trained and competent
- The place where it's done is safe
- The equipment is appropriately inspected
- Risks from fragile surfaces are properly controlled
- Risks from falling objects are properly controlled
Planning
The regulations require you to make a plan if staff will be working from a height. Therefore, you must:
- Look at ways that avoid working from a height if it is safe and reasonably possible to do it another way
- Ensure that the work is properly planned, appropriately supervised and carried out in as safe a way as is reasonably possible
- Plan for emergencies and rescues
- Take account of your general risk assessment
More information
See either the HSE's subsite Work at height or, in Northern Ireland, the HSENI's 'Falls from height guide'.
What is the law guide
The Desktop Lawyer law guide aims to present the law to you in a comprehensive yet jargon-free and easy-to-read format. Our law guide is constantly kept up to date with changes in business and family law by our team of in house solicitors, and includes information across all the legal jurisdictions in the UK.
Our law guide is free to use. Where we provide documents related to this area of law, or where they may help you with any legal issue in this area, they will be listed to the right of this message.