NPORS Safe Use of Stepladders and Ladders Training (N711)

No, and they never have been. The Work at Height Regulations 2005 set a hierarchy rather than a ban: avoid work at height where reasonably practicable, prevent falls where you cannot, and minimise the distance and consequences where a risk remains. A ladder is a reasonable choice for low risk, short duration work. Some individual clients restrict ladder use in their own site rules, which is a client decision rather than the law.

Half a day, with a maximum of ten candidates to one instructor. Two half day groups can run back to back in a single day, which is how most firms cover a whole team or depot in one visit.

LA455, Safe Use of Ladders and Stepladders, published in July 2021. It is the Ladder Association's own publication rather than an HSE one, and it replaced the HSE leaflet INDG455 that most people remember. It puts more emphasis on training and it covers telescopic and combination ladders that the older guidance did not. HSE's guidance on working at height applies alongside it, and so do the Work at Height Regulations 2005.

No. There is no legal time limit written into the regulations. Short duration is a judgement about the task, and the figure people quote comes from guidance about when a ladder is likely to be a sensible choice rather than from a rule. The course teaches how to make that judgement instead of relying on a number.

No. It is a short safety course on the selection, checking and safe use of ladders and stepladders. There is no machine and no operating assessment. It sits alongside operator categories and is commonly run with the harness half day or the tower day.

Yes, and we prefer it. People learn on the equipment they actually use, the faults found during the checks are real, and you usually end the morning with a couple of ladders taken out of service, which is a result in itself.

There should be a check before every use by the person using it, and a more formal periodic inspection recorded by a competent person, with the interval based on how heavily and how roughly the equipment is used. The course covers both and what defects should take a ladder out of service immediately.

Anyone who uses a ladder or stepladder at work, including people who use one rarely. Occasional users are the ones most likely to set a ladder at the wrong angle, leave it unsecured or overreach from it, and they are usually the ones nobody has ever trained.

NPORS courses are priced per course, not per person. What you are paying for is the instructor, the registered tester and the machine time, so the figure turns on four things: the category, which route your operators need (novice, experienced, conversion or refresher), how many people are coming, and whether we run it on your site or at one of ours. It is also why a squad works out considerably cheaper per head than sending operators out one at a time. Use the course builder on this page: tell it who is coming and it works out how many days the course takes and how many times it has to run, which is what the price is built from. Then ask us and you will get a figure for that exact group rather than a list price with conditions attached.

We run NPORS courses across the UK rather than out of one fixed centre, and for most categories the better answer is that we come to you: your operators are assessed on the machine they will be using anyway, nobody loses a day travelling, and for a group it costs less. If you would rather come to us, we have centres at Trent House in Stoke, Pride Park in Derby, Europa House in Manchester and Kingsway House in Liverpool. Tell us where the work is and we will say honestly which way round makes more sense.

There is no fixed timetable to wait for. NPORS courses here are run to order, which means the dates are built around your programme rather than ours, and a single operator or a full squad can normally be booked in within a couple of weeks. If you have a card about to expire or a start date to hit, say so when you enquire and we will work to it.