The Ladder Association’s Telescopic Ladder Campaign Continues

As part of their on-going ‘Step Up to Safe Ladders’ telescopic ladder safety campaign the Ladder Association has released a second report urging the government to make regulatory changes to hold suppliers and online platforms accountable for the ladders that they sell.

The report, named ‘It’s time to Step in’, follows an initial report, ‘Step up to Safe Ladders’ released by the association in May 2022 which highlighted that 82% of the ladders that they tested failed the required safety tests and were unsafe for use. The first report also highlighted the need for more awareness regarding sales of unsafe telescopic ladders as well as stronger regulations to prevent ladders that fail safety tests from being sold.

The new report, published 26^th April 2023, reiterates that the same issues have persisted since the first report with little change occurring. After undertaking a retesting of a proportion of the ladders tested before the association found that all ladders rested failed the tests again showing there had been no change and that the original failures were not an anomaly. Also included in the report are the names of both the brands and their products as well as the seller of the products, details that could not be released in the previous report. Despite this the Association wanted to highlight that the problem reaches further than these specific brands and sellers.

The report also states that yet again products were being falsely labelled as safe and complying with relevant standards with no effective process or management to prevent this from happening.

Finally the report calls on the government to step in and introduce legislation and regulatory changes to prevent the sale of dangerous goods such as telescopic ladders that are not meeting product standards.

Both reports can be read in detail on the Ladder Association’s website.

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