Seven-day scaffold inspections: what the regulations actually require

The seven-day inspection is the single most recognisable duty in scaffolding, and the one most often reduced to a number. Seven days is a maximum interval, not the whole rule — and it is not the only trigger for an inspection.

The triggers

Under the Work at Height Regulations 2005, a working platform used for construction work from which a person could fall more than two metres must be inspected before it is used for the first time in that position, at intervals not exceeding seven days since the last inspection, and after any event liable to have affected its strength or stability — adverse weather being the obvious one, but also substantial alteration or an impact.

• –Before first use in that position — including after a scaffold has been moved or re-erected.
• –At intervals not exceeding seven days thereafter, while it remains in use.
• –After any event liable to jeopardise safety — high winds, a vehicle strike, an unauthorised alteration.

What goes in the report

The regulations set out what an inspection report must contain, including the location and description of what was inspected, the date and time, details of anything found that could give rise to a risk, any action taken, and the name and position of the person making the report. The report has to be provided to the person for whom the inspection was carried out within 24 hours, and kept available — on site while the work continues, and afterwards for a period at the office.

Check the current text of Schedule 3 and Regulation 12 rather than relying on a summary, including this one, for the retention period and the precise wording. The substance rarely moves; the details occasionally do.

Where the duty actually fails

Almost never at the inspection itself. It fails at the tracking: a structure erected on a Tuesday by one squad, inspected the following Tuesday by someone who happened to be passing, and then missed entirely because the job moved to a different gang and nobody was counting from the right date. A scaffold's inspection clock belongs to the structure, not to the person who last happened to look at it.

That is a records problem before it is a safety problem, and it is why inspection dates are worth holding per structure with a reminder that fires before the interval runs out — rather than in a diary entry that survives only as long as the person who wrote it.