Falls from ladders drop

The UK's HSE (Health & Safety Executive) has announced that the number of injuries involving the use of ladders and stepladders fell for the second year running despite 51% more falls from height having been reported to the HSE over the same period

According to the UK's Ladder Association, no one single initiative is responsible, but rather a combination of initiatives driven by the association itself and in collaboration with other agencies, in particular HSE and the AIF (Access Industry Forum), of which it is a founder member.

Chris Ball, chairman of the Ladder Association said, "Whatever the sceptics may say, it cannot be denied that these welcome statistics coincide with a significant increase in the number of users successfully completing a Ladder Association training course. Since the training scheme was first launched in November 2005, the year-on-year increase, after an initial exponential growth in the first few years, has been consistent at around 25% for the last couple of years. "

The Ladder Association has launched and supported a number of initiatives including: Don't be a ladder lightweight aimed at experienced ladder users with a jaundiced view of training and the HSE's Ladder Exchange promoting ladder inspection.

In 2007/08 there were 2132 injuries from ladder falls; in 2008/09 there were 2011 and in 2009/10 and 1817. The figure of 1817 compares to 2631 ladder-related injuries reported to HSE in 2001/02, a drop of 31%.