The Health & Safety Executive (HSE) has put various restrictions and regulations in place to help reduce the risks associated with ladders and step ladders. In this blog, we will run through the laws and safety guidelines that currently apply to ladder usage in the UK – let’s get started!
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Transporting a ladder can be a challenging task, especially if you only have a car at your disposal (as opposed to a van or truck).
We know it can be tempting to just stick the ladder in your car boot and begin your journey home, but there are a number of laws in place that you risk breaking if you allow the ladder to overhang your vehicle.
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SHORT ANSWER: EN131 standards allow for a gap between rungs of 225mm to 300mm.
On almost every ladder in the UK, the rungs are all spaced evenly apart with the same amount of space between each one. Read on to find out why!
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Unsafe ladder use is a leading cause of workplace accidents. To help ensure you don’t injure yourself or others while using one, we’ve put together this handy list of essential ladder safety rules.
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Cast your mind back to the beginning of 2018: Theresa May was Prime Minister, everyone was falling in love with that man-fish thing from The Shape of Water, and the word 'covid' was still a couple of years from meaning anything at all.
It was around this time that the EN131 ladder regulations were updated and a number of new rules came into force regarding the design and manufacture of portable ladders. You can read our blog about EN131 if you want all the details - for now, there's one specific rule we'd like to focus on:
Leaning ladders, telescopic ladders and hinge-jointed ladders longer than 3 metres must be wider at the base to make them more stable.
- from the Ladder Association's updated EN131 guidance
The easiest way to make a ladder wider at its base is to fit it with a stabiliser bar. When the updated EN131 regulations came into effect, most British ladder manufacturers started fitting all of their ladders with a stabiliser bar as standard.
So a ladder without a stabiliser bar can be a difficult thing to find nowadays - and even if you could find one, it wouldn't necessarily be safe to use. Still, if you're absolutely determined to get your hands on a ladder with no stabiliser bar, you do have a few options...
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