Posted By Charley Farley-Trelawney Hate to say that any WAH requires a RA, and if you are confident that control measure are suitable then I suspect the question is answered. I have a similar situation here in one or two places and if the hooped access ladder is fitted with suitable bolts then a harness/lanyard (twin tail) would probably be fine, again, as far as any assessment goes if one were climbing a distance and the fall was potentially a long way down (define long though) then that would require a harness. The arguement then becomes one of...one or two steps up and slip down, fall over , bang head on an edge and its curtains; no harness will help in that situation so further measures to ensure workers safety would need to be considered, again, down to assessment of the hazards.

Posted By Steve B Melanie, Quite an in depth study has been carried out on the effectiveness of hooped ladders when it comes to preventing falls, I have had the same problem and opted for running track fall arrest system. the problem is that hooped ladders do not protect an individual from a downward fall and in some cases cause injury if the person fell backwards. and as it has been said above WAHR the first rung is now considered working at height. If you email me direct I will let you have a copy of the study. Regards Steve