Posted By Liam Nolan Hi, Is the Ladder Attached at true vertical or is it correctly spaced out (75deg or 1 out for 4 up)? If this is a permenant work platform and the ladder is vertical, I would suggest that a single ladder run this high is not compliant. A ladder hoop should be attached to any vertical ladder greater than 2.5m. (BS 5395). Personnally, I would not allow an arrangement similar to what you describe. for the following reason. The ladder should extend 1m above the level being accessed. I think that mounting and unmounting a ladder is one of the hazardous times of being on a ladder (not forgetting over reaching from a ladder etc). Therefore to mount or unmount a ladder while nagotiating an obstical (the hand rail) can be dangerous. (Is there a knee rail on any part of the work top platform? another requirement). If I see a scaffold tower with ladder access I expect to see the ladder set internal to the tower and the scafold boards laid with an apeture for the ladder to protrude through. Then a hinged cover to place ove the aperture to prevent employees falling down. Don't know if this helps Liam

Posted By Dave Randles Skooter, I am employed in a H&S Management role by a medium sized scaffold company and can tell you that this is a very contentious issue, with almost everybody involved in using scaffolds seeming to have one preferred method that they believe to be the safest means of access/egress. Some time ago, we were involved in discussions with one of the major power generation companies with whom we had a maintenance contract, over which was the safest means of providing access/egress. All of the various methods were discussed and my employer, the power company and their health and safety consultant each gave three different views. As we could reach no agreement, we made contact with the HSE and asked for their opinion and, rather predictably, we were informed that their preferred method was as per CIS 49. (Go here for a copy - http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/cis49.pdf) Further discussions took place and we were informed that this matter would be put before the NIG. However, this was three years ago and no further advice has been forthcoming. To attempt to justify our preferred means of access and egress (which incidentally is for a continual top guard rail OR a gate system) we endeavoured to find statistics relating to accidents that had occurred whilst the IP was accessing/egressing scaffolds when the top guardrail was continuous, but were unable to find anything more than the opinions of individuals. There is currently a shift away from ladder access points towards staircases and where this is not possible, for self-closing gate systems to be installed in place of the continuous guardrail. My personal opinion is that both of these methods are safer than the continuous guardrail, but the decision as to whether or not to adopt them must be made locally.

Posted By Dave Randles My personal opinion is that yes, that is a design fault and that it contravenes the requirements of the C (H, S &W) Regs. However, the info sheet was revised (I think) in 2003, so it's quite obvious the author thought this arrangement to be neither unsafe nor illegal.