not a pure CDM expert but just looking at the legislation and case Law...

Yes — from a legal / risk management perspective, appointing someone formally to take responsibility for temporary works design (including Category 0 solutions) remains necessary:

1. CDM 2015 designer duties apply whenever design decisions are made, even if design is limited to specifying and verifying a standard solution. 
2. Courts interpret professional duties based on the scope of services and responsibilities assumed, not titles — someone must be accountable for design decisions and verifying suitability. Cases such as Goldswain & Another v Beltec Ltd, show the courts will examine what was actually assumed and communicated.

BS 5975-1:2024 formal appointments provide evidence of assignment of duties and competence, which is critically relevant in any legal dispute over whether a duty was discharged.

• A Temporary Works Designer role (or equivalent) should be formally appointed regardless of Category to ensure that someone is statutorily accountable as a designer under CDM 2015.
• Formal appointment is not just bureaucratic — it creates clarity on who has accepted design duties, which is important in potential enforcement or civil liability.
• Case law supports that duties arise from what the professional actually does, not simply how roles are titled, and failure to manage obvious risks can lead to liability. 

The first couple of lines answers the question really, the rest you already know but supports the argument, I am sure Peter will dive in at some point...Merry Christmas

Hi karoloydi

I am up for a challenge so I will "dive in"!

Your profile indicates that you are an IOSH Member based in England so let's stick with CDM 2015 as giving a good starting point for legislative requirements and specifically CDM Regulation 19.

Note that Regulation 19 is worded in essentially exactly the same terms as it was under CDM 2007, before that in the Construction (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1996 and before that in the very similar words used in Regulations 49 and 50 of the Construction (General Provisions) Regulations 1961. Can even assume that the relevant parts of Construction (GP) Regs 1961 were a consolidation of what had previously been in the Safety, Health and Welfare (Construction) Regulations 1948 as amended.

So nothing new and wording which predates the first iteration of BS 5975 by decades!

In all probability the only reason that Reg 19 of CDM 2015 sets out duties that are qualified by "practicable" rather than "reasonably practicable" was that the legislators had to take note of the constraints set out in Section 1(2) of HSWA 1974.

It is very important to remember that there are very few Britiish Standards that set out requirements that have the status of law and BS 5975 is not one of them. It has recommendations and was aimed at a particular audience, and I suggest an audience that was not intended to include those erecting simple scaffolds or even stepladders.

It was the product of an Inquiry into the reasons for the Loddon Viaduct collapse and similar incidents involving poorly executed "falsework" and "formwork".

There is an article in the IOSH Magazine just now which refers to the WorkSafe New Zealand "Statement of Intent" for the period up to to 2029. Link at Statement of Intent 2025–2029 | WorkSafe

Small nation so the numbers are smaller than for the UK but the overall picture is broadly consistent in terms of the ratio between the impacts of the risks in the first two categories cited below.

So WorkSafe NZ thinks it should be focusing most on "critical risks" and divides these into three categories:

1. Acute risks, commenting that these result in about 50-60 people being killed and 400-500 being hospitalised as a result of accidents at work each year.

2. Chronic risks, resulting in 750-900 people dying prematurely each year as a result of past exposures to occpational health risks.

3. "Catastrophic" risks - described by WorkSafe thus:

"Multiple people suffer serious injury or death from a single event

May cause significant economic or environmental damage"

Two good examples might be the tailings dams collapses at Fundao and then Brumadinho. The first killed relatively (statitstically) few people but caused catastrophic environmental damage. The latter killed nearly 200 people downstream. 

WorkSafe cite just two incidents in this category in recent years. They don't happen very often and when they do many of the pretty graphs that organisations keep tend to go awry.

I used to work for Jacobs and there was a point where there were two variants of the graphs illustrating the trend in Lost Time Injury Frequencuy Rates - one that included BP Texas City, one which omitted it other than as a footnote to the graph.

I suggest that the intent of the first and subsequent iterations of BS 5975 was to deal with one class of risks of the "Catastrophic" type.

Just as the "low probability, high consequence" scenario of a Major Hazard site would also be covered under this risk category.

If people start demanding the full application of BS 5975 for each and every simple "scaffold" (within the meaning of CDM), they will create vast quantities of documentation which will both deflect from when e.g. TW design is REALLY needed AND almost certainly further dilute the attention these people give to the risks as defined by WorkSafe in the second category - the chronic risks.

Over the years I have been involved in the investigations of 40 fatal accidents in some capacity or another. Over half have involved people falling to their deaths, mostly preventable by implementing reasonably practicable measures.

One of them involved people working on the roof of a school. A system scaffold had been erected for access to the various works being done on site and this provided edge protection for the eaves of the roof. 

Two of the men working on the roof fell about 6m when a single guard-rail gave way. The first died, the second landed on the first and was largely unharmed at least physically.

When we looked at the aftermath it was obvious that the guard-rail was bent, so the question was whether this component of the scaffold had been bent before the accident, during the accident or perhaps a mixture of both.

So, we did a reconstruction. Enough tolerance on the system to enable the rail to be fitted securely ("banana" into "wedge" with limited bend on the tube. Too much bend and the banana could not be fully secured into the wedge.

At the time it was illegal to use defective components on a scaffold and, of course, that rule still applies.

Will we prevent this sort of accident by producing a Temporary Works Design and getting someone to issue a Permit to Load? Do you really think that the Temporary Works Coordinator or Supervisor is actually going to inspect each and every metal component on a 6m high scaffold that extends 20m in length or do we at some point have to place some trust that scaffolders know what the rules are?

....and if your answer is that you DO think that the TWC and/or TWS should actually inspect every component how long will you give them to do this?

....and should they condemn every scaffold board that has some paint at the ends and, if so, will you help with the search for unidentifiable scaffold boards when they get stolen?

....and would you expect the TWC and/or TWS to be the person who does the inspection of the scaffold at least once every 7 days AND when circumstances such as adverse weather might have impacted it? If so, how much time and budget will you build into the project for this to happen?

 A week ago last Thursday, I walked out of the building in which I live to see a tower scaffold erected from the front basement well next door which is a complete five storey townhouse being converted into three flats. Thought that I doubted that the workers intended to complete the tower.

So, on my way back not only was one worker standing on a platform with midrails but no top rails, but one man was standing with one foot on mid-rail, the other on one of the lugs on a standard. Reaching up to do stonemasonry repairs.

Do you actually think that demanding TW design and oversight will stop the cowboys just doing what cowboys have always done on poorly managed UK construction sites? Just chuck up some access, do the work and get away before anyone is likely to notice. A step ladder would actually have been safer!

Life should perhaps sometimes be about priorities not utopia. Would it be better to shift focus from overdocumenting simple access tasks towards mitigating all those chronic health risks on the projects on which you are involved?

Edited by user 14 December 2025 16:58:54(UTC)  | Reason: Single word