It is interesting to see the steady change that has taken place over just a year. I remember similar topics to this being discussed here not long after the proposal doc came out, and the attitude of many was "oh it'll take 10 years to come about" and "they have been saying they're gonna do this for years" and "nothing will ever change".
And here we are the regs have been law for 6 months and they are certainly having an impact! Over time it has become apparent to many more window cleaners what can be considered "reasonably practicable" and what isn't.
Window cleaners are not the only trade affected by the regs, but our industry has been one of the most affected. The reason is that, by sheer coincidence, they have come along at a time when a new method is starting to be widely available for window cleaning that doesn't involve work at height, and this is not really the case for other trades.
Yes painters, decorators, roofers etc all use ladders and work at height. The regs won't affect them quite so much, because they don't really have an alternative. (Even if they use scaffolding, this is still work at height) but us window cleaners do have an alternative, and because of that it is harder for us to be able to justify work at height.
Another point to bear in mind is cost. Normally, in order to comply with new H&S regs, companies must spend money. When the HSE drafts new legislation it has to take into consideration the cost of compliance. It will not make unreasonable demands on an industry. But, with window cleaning, this situation is somewhat different.
Even before the regulations came about, window cleaners were changing over to using poles because they were finding that they were not only safer but also faster too. This being the case, window cleaners cannot really argue that the cost of using the safer system is prohibitively expensive, because the efficiency advantage makes economic sense even without any safety benefit. The HSE knows this, and I think that is a potential basis for them to require window cleaners to use pole systems, except where the nature of the site doesn't allow it.
10 years ago, ammendments to the Health & Safety at Work Act became law in the UK, and contained some of the first ever work-at-height regulations in Britain. This came about becuase statistics showed that falls from height, and particularly falls from ladders, was causing an unacceptable number of deaths and serious injuries to workers.
The accident rate has not improved over the last ten years, and so now the Temporary Work at Height Regulations restrict working at height, and again particularly the use of ladders, even further. There isn't really any other way that the use of ladders could be restricted any more. In ten years time, I think that if the accident rate doesn't improve, then we really will be facing an outright ban on using ladders.
It's tempting to think that couldn't hapen here, but don't you believe it. Holland has had an outright ban on ladders in place since it first adopted the European Directive, and several other European states are considering the same. All trades, from window cleaners to roofers have to find other means to work (usually cherry pickers) and this has meant only larger companies that can afford the outlay have survived in those trades.
As window cleaners, we need to be able to use ladders. There are situations that just can't be done any other way. But in order for us to be able to continue to use them when necessary, we also need to make sensible choices about when they aren't the most appropriate method. If, as an industry, we prove that we can't make that choice sensibly, then eventually the HSE will certainly do it for us, and that really would be a disaster for window cleaning.
-Philip