Work at Height Regulations: What Duty Holders Must Do

"Duty holder" sounds like it means the person up the ladder, or maybe the site manager. Under the Work at Height Regulations it reaches a good deal further than that, and the responsibilities start well before anyone leaves the ground. Here is who counts as a duty holder, and exactly what the regulations require of them.

What Are Duty Holders' Responsibilities Under the Work at Height Regulations?

Under the Work at Height Regulations 2005, duty holders must ensure all work at height is properly planned, supervised and carried out by competent people. Their core responsibility is to follow the hierarchy of avoiding work at height, preventing falls, and minimising the consequences of a fall, applying it in that order.

Those duties sit on top of a wider obligation to assess the risk and use the right equipment. We carry out WAHR examinations across Berkshire and the surrounding counties, and the inspection side is only one part of a responsibility that runs from planning through to rescue.

Who Counts as a Duty Holder?

This is where businesses underestimate their position. A duty holder is not only the employer whose staff go up the ladder. The regulations place duties on employers, the self-employed, and anyone who controls the work of others at height.

In practice that pulls in facilities managers, building owners and occupiers who control how work is done on their premises, and main contractors coordinating others. Responsibility is usually shared along the chain, with the contractor's employer carrying duties for training, equipment and method, and the client or occupier carrying duties for the condition of the premises and the hazard information they provide. When an incident is investigated, every party in that chain is looked at. For the basics of the regulations themselves, see our explainer on what WAHR stands for.

When the Regulations Apply

There is no minimum height. The old two-metre rule was removed when the 2005 regulations came in, and the duties now apply wherever a person could fall a distance liable to cause personal injury.

That means the regulations cover far more than scaffolds and roofs. They apply to work on a stepladder, work near a fragile rooflight, and work at ground level next to an open trench or a floor opening. A fall of less than two metres onto a hard floor or sharp equipment can be just as serious, which is why the risk, not the height, is what triggers the duty.

The Hierarchy: Avoid, Prevent, Minimise

This is the heart of a duty holder's responsibility. Regulation 6 of the Work at Height Regulations 2005 sets out a hierarchy that must be worked through in order, not cherry-picked:

• Avoid work at height where it is reasonably practicable to do the job another way, such as using long-handled tools from the ground

• Prevent falls where work at height is unavoidable, using an existing safe place of work or collective protection such as guard rails and working platforms

• Minimise the distance and consequences of a fall where a risk remains, using measures such as nets, airbags or personal fall protection

The order matters legally. A duty holder cannot skip to handing out harnesses without first showing that avoiding the work and preventing the fall were not reasonably practicable. Collective protection, which protects everyone without relying on individual action, comes before personal protection every time.

Planning, Supervision and Competence

Regulation 4 requires every instance of work at height to be properly planned, appropriately supervised and carried out safely. Planning includes selecting a safe method, accounting for the weather where it could endanger people, and, crucially, planning for emergencies and rescue rather than relying on the emergency services alone.

Regulation 5 deals with competence. Anyone involved in organising, planning, supervising or carrying out work at height must be competent to do so, or be supervised by a competent person while training. In our experience, rescue planning is the duty most often overlooked, because a worker left suspended in a harness after a fall can suffer serious harm within minutes.

Selecting and Inspecting Work Equipment

Regulation 7 requires duty holders to choose the most suitable work equipment, again giving collective protection priority over personal. Once equipment is in use, the duties continue.

Regulation 12 requires work equipment to be inspected where its safety depends on how it is installed or assembled, and at suitable intervals thereafter. Working platforms used in construction, where a person could fall two metres or more, must be inspected before use and at least every 7 days. Regulation 13 requires the surface and edge protection of a place of work at height to be checked before use. Personal fall protection carries its own regime, which we cover in our guides to how often fall protection equipment should be inspected and the fall protection equipment inspection itself.

Fragile Surfaces and Falling Objects

Two further duties catch people out. Regulation 9 requires duty holders to take specific measures where work involves or passes near fragile surfaces, such as asbestos cement roofs and rooflights, which cause a significant share of fatal falls.

Regulation 10 covers falling objects. Duty holders must do all that is reasonably practicable to stop objects falling and, where that cannot be guaranteed, to stop anyone being struck. Exclusion zones and toe boards are common ways of meeting this.

What Employees Must Do

Duties do not fall on employers alone. Under Regulation 14, anyone working under another person's control must report any activity or defect relating to work at height that they know is likely to endanger safety.

They must also use the equipment provided properly, in line with their training and instructions. An employee should not carry out work at height unless they are competent to do so, or are being supervised while training, and they are entitled to raise concerns about work they believe is genuinely unsafe.

A Duty Holder Checklist

Pulling the responsibilities together, a duty holder should:

• Assess the risk of every task that involves work at height

• Apply the avoid, prevent, minimise hierarchy in that order

• Choose collective protection before personal protection

• Ensure everyone planning, supervising or doing the work is competent

• Plan for emergencies and rescue, not just the work itself

• Inspect work equipment and places of work at the required intervals

• Keep records and act promptly on any defect reported

Get those in place and most of the regulations look after themselves, because they all flow from the same principle of managing the risk before the work starts.

The Bottom Line

A duty holder under the Work at Height Regulations is anyone who employs people to work at height, is self-employed doing it, or controls how others do it. Their central responsibility is to plan the work, use competent people, and work through the avoid, prevent, minimise hierarchy in order.

The duties reach from the first risk assessment to the inspection of the equipment and the rescue plan behind it. Our thorough examination services cover the inspection side, but meeting the regulations in full means treating the whole sequence as the duty it is.