Competence is not clearly defined and a 'course' is not always available nor suitable in some areas My personal step ladders were made in 1943 [the War department stamp is still clearly present!] out of OAK so they carry no CE marking but I assure you that you cannot easily [if at all] procure ladders of this quality today and they are still in excellent condition so a course stating that all ladders should carry the CE mark is missing the point My point here is that you need to fully understand the competence of your staff to move forward and organise a course / or not as the case may be That said your staff may think that they are competent where they may not be as checking and inspecting is not the same thing and poor practice may have creeped in or been their from the begining Additionally a person who does not know the characteristics of the specific material that a ladder is made of is not competent to inspect that ladder; and thats the point as many checkers/inspectors today are only knowledgeable about Ali ladders and automaticially ban other materials! Another lost art! Talk to them

Thanks to you both i think a full ladder audit would be appropriate. leaning towards (no pun meant) a set standard eg EN131 that way at least if the worst was to happen then we can at least say that suitable equipment was used. Could well be the way forward including other control measures