The National Access & Scaffolding Confederation (NASC) is urging the government to introduce a law to require scaffolders to be not just ‘competent’, as at present, but ‘qualified’.
The NASC, which represents scaffolding contractors, sees the Gas Safe register as a model for its own sector.
The NASC argues that the requirement for ‘competence’ in scaffolders is a grey area and that the industry would be safer if it were more tightly regulated.
The NASC has formally submitted its recommendation that scaffolders should have to be ‘qualified’ – and not just ‘competent’ – in response to the recent government report by Professor Löfstedt reviewing workplace health and safety legislation. Löfstedt’s report recommended that the Work at Height Regulations be reviewed by 2013. The report was commissioned with a view to relaxing laws, however, not makiing them more onersous as NASC appears to be suggesting.
The NASC says that the use of the word ‘competent’ at the heart of the Work at Height Regulations “has resulted in different interpretations and hence different standards of safety protocol”.
It adds: “The NASC recommend that these terms be replaced by the term ‘qualified’ (as already adopted in the gas fitting industry). The work at height industry, including scaffolding can demonstrate clearly and accurately that an individual is ‘qualified’ by virtue of the fact that he has completed suitable training, which includes theoretical, practical and on site experience – the aptitude of the Scaffolder to continue to carry out his/her skilled works is also challenged every five years to ensure continued compliance. Scaffolding contracting companies are also able to be audited to ensure continued compliance/qualification via existing regulated protocol such as the NASC’s membership criteria which is already acknowledged by many clients and main contractors as the only method of determining scaffolding prowess that meets all current scaffolding and health & safety legislation.”
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