The Work at Height Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2005

Interpretation

2.—(1) In these Regulations –

“the 1978 Order” means the Health and Safety at Work (Northern Ireland) Order 1978;

“access” and “egress” include ascent and descent;

“construction work” has the meaning assigned to it by regulation 2 of the Construction (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 1996(1);

“the Executive” means the Health and Safety Executive for Northern Ireland;

“fragile surface” means a surface which would be liable to fail if any reasonably foreseeable loading were to be applied to it;

“ladder” includes a fixed ladder and a stepladder;

“line” includes rope, chain or webbing;

“the Management Regulations” means the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2000(2);

“personal fall protection system” means –

(a)

a fall prevention, work restraint, work positioning, fall arrest or rescue system, other than a system in which the only safeguards are collective protection measures; or

(b)

rope access and positioning techniques;

“suitable” means suitable in any respect which it is reasonably foreseeable will affect the safety of any person;

“territorial sea” means the territorial sea of the United Kingdom adjacent to Northern Ireland and “within the territorial sea” includes on, over and under it;

“work at height” means –

(a)

work in any place, including a place at or below ground level;

(b)

obtaining access to or egress from such place while at work, except by a staircase in a permanent workplace,

where, if measures required by these Regulations were not taken, a person could fall a distance liable to cause personal injury;

“work equipment” means any machinery, appliance, apparatus, tool or installation for use at work (whether exclusively or not) and includes anything to which regulation 8 and Schedules 3 to 7 apply;

“working platform” –

(a)

means any platform used as a place of work or as a means of access to or egress from a place of work;

(b)

includes any scaffold, suspended scaffold, cradle, mobile platform, trestle, gangway, gantry and stairway which is so used.

(2) Any reference in these Regulations to the keeping of a report or copy of a report or plan shall include reference to its being kept in a form –

(a)in which it is capable of being reproduced as a printed copy when required;

(b)which is secure from loss or unauthorised interference.