Ladder inspection, defined: a visual check of a ladder for damage that would make it unsafe, done by the user before use and by a competent person at set intervals.
A ladder inspection is a visual check of a ladder or stepladder for defects that would make it unsafe to climb: damaged feet, bent stiles, loose or cracked rungs, missing tie rods, failed locking mechanisms. In the UK it exists in two forms, a pre-use check by the person about to climb and a periodic detailed inspection by a competent person, and the two carry different duties.
The split matters because most sites treat them as one thing. The Work at Height Regulations 2005 and PUWER 1998 apply to ladders used for work. HSE and Ladder Association guidance (LA455, which replaced the older INDG455 leaflet) sets out the practice: a pre-use check before each use, for the immediate benefit of the user, does not have to be recorded. A detailed visual inspection, at intervals the employer sets from its risk assessment and the manufacturer's instructions, must be done by a competent person and must be recorded. A site that only does one of the two is missing half the system.
What a ladder pre-use check covers
The user does it at the start of the working day and again if anything changes: the ladder has been dropped, moved from a dirty area, or left outside. Under a minute, no tools:
- Feet: present, not worn smooth, not clogged with mud or grease.
- Stiles: straight, no dents, cracks or bends.
- Rungs and treads: none missing, loose, cracked or worn; tie rods in place.
- Locking bars, hinges and stays on a stepladder: engage properly, no bent or missing parts.
- Platform on a platform step: not split or buckled.
- Welds and rivets: no cracks, nothing loose.
- Labels: the class and maximum load still readable.
Any defect found means the ladder is not used. The user reports it rather than deciding it will probably be fine.
The detailed inspection and the ladder tag
The detailed inspection looks at the same items more carefully and puts a name, a date and an outcome on paper. Competence here is a mix of training, knowledge and experience; a trained employee can do it on site. The interval is set by the risk assessment: a ladder in daily use on a construction site needs looking at far more often than one kept in an office cupboard. Many employers settle on a fixed interval and put it on a ladder tag, a holder fixed to the stile showing the ladder's asset number, the date of the last inspection, the inspector and the next due date. A missing or out-of-date tag is a visible signal that the ladder should not be picked up.
The tag is a status indicator. The record behind it is the inspection itself, and the two should never be confused. Read inspector competence and inspection interval for how the frequency is justified.
Ladder inspection example: a stepladder with a missing foot
A facilities technician at a secondary school picks up a fibreglass stepladder from the caretaker's store to change a corridor light. The pre-use check finds the rear right foot gone, the bare stile scuffed where it has been standing on tile. The ladder tag shows a detailed inspection three weeks ago, passed. Both things are true: the ladder was fine three weeks ago, and it is not fine now. The technician photographs the stile end and the tag, reports the ladder, and takes another one. The photograph goes to the facilities manager, who orders a replacement foot and marks the ladder out of use in the register. Without the photo the report is "a foot is missing on one of the steps", and somebody has to go and find which one.
What a ladder inspection does not do
It does not decide whether a ladder was the right choice for the job. That question belongs to the risk assessment and the work at height hierarchy, and a perfect ladder used for a 40-minute job at 5 metres is still the wrong tool. It does not test load capacity, and it does not repair anything: a defective ladder is withdrawn, not patched.
The mistakes teams make are familiar. Tags updated without a real look at the ladder. Domestic ladders brought from home with no class marking. Defective ladders left in the store where the next person picks them up. Inspection records kept in a spreadsheet nobody can match to the physical ladder because the asset numbers have worn off. And the most common one: no record of which ladder was involved after a fall, because nobody ever wrote the asset number on the check.
Where the record goes
The detailed inspection record needs the ladder's identifier, the date, the inspector, the items checked, the outcome and any action. Keep it per ladder in an asset register or equipment file, alongside the purchase date and the class. A pre-use check does not have to be recorded, but a photo of a defect at the moment it is found, with a timestamp and the asset number in frame, is the cheapest form of inspection evidence a site can produce and the one most often missing.
Venta Capture, a product of VentaVid, runs both kinds of check as a guided flow: the user or the competent person opens a link or scans the QR code on the ladder tag, follows the steps in the mobile browser on their own phone with no app, photographs the feet, stiles, rungs and label where asked, and the submission arrives timestamped and sealed in the review inbox for the facilities or safety team. Details at the Venta Capture pages.
In practice: see how field service teams use Venta Capture.