Ladder owners must be aware of the risks associated with working on a ladder and take the necessary precautions before doing so. One such precaution is performing a pre-use check before each use to ensure there are no signs of damage to your ladder. A damaged or faulty ladder could collapse with you on it and cause a nasty fall.

To avoid this, here's a handy guide on how to inspect a ladder...

Ladder inspection checklist

According to HSE (Health and Safety Executive), you must check the following when inspecting a ladder:

1. Stiles

Make sure the stiles (also known as the side rails) are not bent or damaged in any way, or else the ladder could collapse beneath you.

2. Feet

Check to see if they are missing, worn, or damaged. Make sure the anti-slip surfaces are also undamaged. If so, the ladder could slip as you use it.

3. Rungs

Are they bent? Worn? Missing? Loose? If so, you could fall while using the ladder.

Working at height comes with risks. If you're planning to use a leaning ladder, it's important to conduct a thorough ladder risk assessment beforehand.

In most situations, you can use a ladder alone. If you’re at home and a bulb or smoke alarm battery needs changing, you can set up a step ladder or step stool to tackle the job on your own.

But is it really safe to use a ladder alone? Read on to find out more.

Unsafe ladder use is a leading cause of workplace accidents. To help ensure you don’t injure yourself or others while using one, we’ve put together this handy list of essential ladder safety rules.

Cast your mind back to the beginning of 2018: Theresa May was Prime Minister, everyone was falling in love with that man-fish thing from The Shape of Water, and the word 'covid' was still a couple of years from meaning anything at all.

It was around this time that the EN131 ladder regulations were updated and a number of new rules came into force regarding the design and manufacture of portable ladders. You can read our blog about EN131 if you want all the details - for now, there's one specific rule we'd like to focus on:

Leaning ladders, telescopic ladders and hinge-jointed ladders longer than 3 metres must be wider at the base to make them more stable.

- from the Ladder Association's updated EN131 guidance

The easiest way to make a ladder wider at its base is to fit it with a stabiliser bar. When the updated EN131 regulations came into effect, most British ladder manufacturers started fitting all of their ladders with a stabiliser bar as standard.

So a ladder without a stabiliser bar can be a difficult thing to find nowadays - and even if you could find one, it wouldn't necessarily be safe to use. Still, if you're absolutely determined to get your hands on a ladder with no stabiliser bar, you do have a few options...