Posted By Canned heat Can anybody help at all? We are working for a housing association and the work involves working in tenants kitchen doing plastering. The problem is operatives are exposed to a fall from height by working off milk crates and small fold away benches. The kitchen is too small to put anything in like a tower and other similar devices, and it is more difficult as the tenant is still living there while the work is carried out. they ideally need something around 300mm high with guardrails. I have advised the operatives manager to stop the operatives from using the crates but he advises they will not be able to do the job. The risk assessment has highlighted falls from height doing this work. I know there was a post about this a few years ago but there was not much response. What do other people do in a similar situation? Any help most welcomed

Posted By Canned heat thanks Toby i totally agree about the crates and pointed it out to the respective manager to take action. my only concern is with a hop up such as the example link you provided, there is no type of fall prevention such as rails. is this acceptable to use? they will be using this for alot of their working day and will not have a hand free?

Posted By Canned heat Bob, Thanks for the post. I agree that would be a great idea. unfortunately, some of the managers we have here are of the 'here we go again with elfandsafety' mentality. They would be quite happy to use the milk crate unless i advised otherwise. I will take your point on-board though.

Posted By Barry x Do your plasterers not use stilts? You could always use bean bags with scaffold boards/ sheets cut to size!!

Posted By al wood there is a propriety system made by youngman check out their website for further details. p.s. i dont work for them by the way, just passing on information.

Posted By Andrew Shaw Hi, I posted a query about working at height a couple of weeks ago. It was regarding the lack of hand rails on many of these mobile scaffolds and work platforms. I've just looked at the Youngmans website as suggested by Al Wood above and note that a couple of their lower level work platforms don't have handrails. There's a nice picture of a guys painting a wall purple - see link http://www.youngmangroup...latforms/en-131-prodeck/ How can this be squared with the risk of stepping of the back of the platform. I can't imagine being able to write a risk assessment that would say that this was acceptable - am I missing something? I'm battling site operatives and indeed, site supervisors to insist on hand rails all round the work platform. Any Comments.....