Permit to Work at Heights
Health & Safety Xpert™ Total Toolkit is an easy to use software package that will save you massive amounts of time producing crucial health and safety documentation legally required under current UK law. This includes the Health & Safety at Work Act 1974 and the new Construction Design Management (CDM) Regulations 2007.
The Permit to Work at Heights printout is available with Health and Safety Xpert Total Toolkit. Click here to view a sample Permit to Work at Heights PDF.
Under the Working at Height Regulations 2005, a Risk Assessment is an essential part of complying with these regulations and must be done (under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999) to determine a safe system of work (Method Statement).
Method Statements need only be completed when there are unforeseen, unplanned or specialist activities on site which are not covered by relevant risk assessments. Method Statements are site-specific and can only be completed by a trained, experienced and competent person. Method Statements must be completed on site.
The regulations require arrangements to be in place for:
- Eliminating or minimizing risks from working at height
- Safe systems of work for organizing and performing work at height
- Safe systems for selecting suitable work equipment at height
- Safe systems for protecting people from the consequences of work at height
The assessment must be done by a competent person and will normally be formalized into a specific Permit to Work, applicable to a particular task.
All people involved in work at height activity including planning, organizing and supervising must be competent for such work, or if being trained, under competent supervision.
The work equipment specified in the Method Statement and associated Permit to Work must also comply with the applicable schedules of the regulations including provision of correctly positioned guard rails, toe boards or other fall protection. If your equipment for work at height is found to be inadequate, you can be fined.
Use the Permit to Work at Heights included with Health and Safety Xpert software to help you control hazardous work and authorise specific persons to undertake particular tasks in a designated area. The Permit to Work is designed to help you define the safety precautions to be taken depending on the nature of the work being performed and the hazards involved. You should use it to record the methods to be used and precautions to be taken which should be agreed to by all parties concerned beforehand and clearly stated on the Permit to Work. The Permit to Work must be signed off by all parties before any work commences. Permits to Work are only valid for specific short periods of time and therefore help you to monitor the on going use of suitable safe systems of work.
It is important to file these records so that they could be consulted by an inspector if necessary.