Posted By Frank Hallett An open question - especially to the Regulators 'cos their responses have an incredible affect on how us normal mortals try to understand and implement the Law. With regard to working at height legislation; what are the technical and logical differences between:- A plasterer on relatively short stilts and a circus performer on longer stilts? A labourer sitting on a "Youngmans" 2metres above the next landing point with no edge protection and a Parks employee who is required to ride a horse? I know what the legislation says; I know what the associated HSE ACoP, Guidance and explanatory text says - but none of them provide a a consistantly defensible answer. Frank Hallett

Posted By gham I think the other point is In the event of a site vist form our Inspectorate Colleagues, interpratation of the legislation and guidance by the site safety management and that of the inspector may be quite different. (and try getting them to provide you with a recommendation to comply with their interpretation In the event of and accident and subsiquent litigatation, the demostrating you are doing as much as reasonably practical to reduce the risk could be as trick as peeing into the wind. If you are going to have to defend your actions then you should at least be given a consistant set of rules and guidance to work from G'

Posted By Frank Hallett Thanks for your posting Steve What I had actually expected in my naivety was a far better and more workable definition of WaH. For the regulators to identify - almost in passing - that they "would not be minded to consider a police officer on a horse as working at height" when there is such an aggressive approach to other, essentially similar situations really is inconsistant. Of course, the definition of WaH could possibly have been written rather better or the existing universal definition enforced more consistantly. Frank Hallett

Posted By Frank Hallett No Jack - definitely not after a prescriptive system - just a better applied and thought out set of fundamentals. Frank Hallett

Posted By steven bentham Perhaps you should have asked another questions Frank: Did we ever need such legislation? Work at heights will be enforced in construction; its an obvious risk if uncontrolled. You could argue that construction (on the whole)has this well thought out. Whilst work at relatively low heights remains a risk,the existing risk based legislation should have been used by regulators. I have seen some nasty accidents from relatively small heights (smaller than a horse but bigger than a pony!)but the UK did not need this legislation at all.