Working at Height Awareness

About this course.

This course raises awareness of the risks of working at height and how to control them. Falls from height are consistently the single biggest cause of workplace fatalities in Great Britain — but with proper planning, competent people and the right precautions, the risk is preventable. According to HSE statistics, falls from height account for around a quarter of all worker deaths each year, and they affect not only construction but agriculture, warehousing, maintenance, facilities, telecoms, window cleaning and countless other sectors where people climb, reach or work above (or below) ground level. The course explains what working at height is, the law and the duties placed on employers, the self-employed and workers, the role of suitable and sufficient risk assessment, the key hazards, and — at its heart — the legal hierarchy for managing work at height set out in Regulation 6 of the Work at Height Regulations 2005: avoid, prevent, minimise.

It then looks in practical detail at selecting and using the main types of access equipment (ladders and stepladders, tower scaffolds, MEWPs and traditional scaffolds), managing fragile surfaces and falling objects, accounting for weather, and ensuring competence, inspection and emergency rescue. It is an awareness-level course. It does not on its own make a person competent to erect a scaffold, operate a MEWP or supervise complex work at height — those require task-specific training and, in many cases, recognised competence schemes. What it does is give every learner the knowledge to recognise risk, understand their legal duties, challenge unsafe practice and play their part in a safe system of work.