Working at height and insurance: the records that decide a fall claim

I run a scaffolding company, so working at height is not some niche corner of what I do - it is the whole job, every day, on every site. It is also the single area where I know, for a fact, that an insurance claim will be scrutinised harder than anywhere else. That is not paranoia; it is simple maths. Falls from height are the biggest single cause of death and of serious, life-changing injury in UK construction, year after year. Insurers know that number better than anyone, and when a fall claim lands on their desk they treat it accordingly - a thorough, forensic go through every record, because the sums involved are enormous and the stakes could not be higher. So I want to walk through the exact documents a fall claim turns on, and be blunt about why any one of them going missing can be the thing that decides the whole claim against you.

The working-at-height risk assessment - where it all begins

Everything hangs off this one document, so it comes first. The Work at Height Regulations 2005 do not just ask you to be careful; they set out a clear hierarchy you are legally required to work through. Avoid working at height where you reasonably can. Where you cannot avoid it, prevent falls using the right equipment and precautions. And where you cannot fully prevent them, minimise the distance and consequences of a fall. Your RAMS has to show that thinking applied to the actual job in front of you - not in the abstract, but for this scaffold, on this building, on this day.

That means it should name the specific access method and why you chose it - why a scaffold or a tower rather than leaning a ladder against the wall. It should set out the edge protection. It should mark the exclusion zone below, because a fall is not the only risk - so is a dropped tool onto whoever is standing underneath. It should deal with the weather and the wind, which on a high or exposed job can be the difference between safe and lethal. And it should include a rescue plan, because if a man falls into a harness and is left hanging, the clock is against you and "we'll call an ambulance" is not a plan. After a fall, the loss adjuster reads this document with one question in mind: was the hazard that actually caused the harm identified here, and was it controlled? A generic "working at height" assessment that could have been printed for any job is close to worthless in that moment, because it planned nothing - it did not plan the job that went wrong.

The inspection records for the access equipment

Next, and on a fall claim this is often decisive, the inspection records. A scaffold from which a person could fall a distance liable to cause injury must be inspected before it is first used, then at regular intervals - in practice, at least every seven days - and again after any event that could have affected its stability, such as high winds or an alteration. That inspection has to be done by a competent person and it has to be recorded. Towers, MEWPs and other access equipment carry their own inspection requirements on top. These are core scaffolding compliance records and inspections, kept for exactly this reason.

Here is why this record is so often the one that makes or breaks a fall claim: it goes straight to the cause. If a man fell from a scaffold, the very first thing anyone wants to know is whether that scaffold was sound and had been checked. A dated inspection record, with the name of the competent person who signed it off, answers that question in your favour - it shows the equipment was checked and fit at the relevant time. No record, and you have no answer at all to the most obvious question in the whole investigation. A missing scaffold inspection record on a fall claim is, in my honest view, about the worst single gap you can have, because there is nowhere to hide from it - the claim is about a fall from the very thing you cannot prove you inspected.

Training and competence for everyone who went up

Then the people. Whoever was working at height, and just as importantly whoever erected the access equipment they were standing on, had to be competent for it. For scaffolding that means the right CISRS cards for the work in question; for other trades it is whatever training matches the task. The insurer will ask for the records for the specific individuals involved, not a general assurance that your lads are a good crew. Competence you cannot evidence is competence the insurer is free to question - and on a fall claim, with everything at stake, you can be sure they will question it. The man who fell, and the men who built what he fell from, all need a paper trail behind them.

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The sign-off: proof he actually knew

A working-at-height method statement that nobody was ever briefed on is a piece of paper, not a defence, and on a fall claim that distinction becomes brutally important. The men who went up had to be briefed on the method and the controls, and they had to sign to say they understood. That signature is the thread that connects the safe system on paper to the actual human being who climbed the scaffold. It is your proof that the operative knew the fall risk existed and knew how it was being managed.

Put yourself in the fall investigation. "There was a method statement for working at height" and "the operative was briefed on the working-at-height method statement that morning and signed to confirm he understood it" are worlds apart, and only the second one protects you. The first says a document existed in a folder. The second says the man who fell had, that very day, been told about the risk that hurt him and how to control it - which is precisely what an insurer needs to see before they accept you took reasonable precautions.

Proof the controls were actually there on the day

Beyond the documents lies a question they cannot answer: were the controls actually in place on the day, or did they only exist on paper? This is where site photos earn their keep and then some. A time-stamped, located photograph of the edge protection up, the exclusion zone barriered off, the scaffold tagged and showing a current inspection, is powerful, almost unarguable evidence that the plan on paper was the reality on site. Site notes and evidence captured against the job turn "we always do it properly" - which is just an assertion - into "here it is, on that day, in a photograph nobody can dispute". After a fall, that is the whole difference between claiming the control was there and proving it was.

Why the fall claim is where every gap gets found

Every trade's paperwork has soft spots. The difference with a fall claim is that it finds them, without fail, because the investigation is exhaustive and the money at stake is life-changing. A serious fall can mean a permanent, catastrophic injury and a claim running well into six or even seven figures - a sum that dwarfs every premium you will ever pay. Faced with that, the insurer has every possible incentive to comb the records for a breached condition, and a breach connected to the cause is all they need. If the working-at-height assessment was generic, if the scaffold inspection was never written down, if nobody signed the method statement, they have their argument, and it is a strong one.

I do not say any of this to frighten you off the cover, or to make working at height sound like a legal minefield you cannot survive. I say it because the flip side is genuinely reassuring: there are only four or five records that decide a fall claim, and if you keep those in good order at all times, you move from being exposed to being properly protected. It is a short, knowable list, and it is entirely within your control. I have set out the broader picture in will your insurance pay out if you have a claim? and the full document checklist in the paperwork your insurer will ask for, and, for public liability specifically, why a claim can be refused.

Where Complys fits

Complys is built for exactly this situation, and honestly, working at height is the case I had most in mind when I got involved, because it is the one that keeps me up at night. It produces a proper, site-specific working-at-height RAMS - the access method, the edge protection, the exclusion zone, the rescue plan - in minutes rather than the long slog it takes to write one by hand, and it captures your team's sign-off so the briefing is evidenced rather than assumed. It keeps your inspection and training records on file and current, so the very documents a fall claim hunts for are never the ones that quietly lapsed. And it keeps your site photos time-stamped and located against the job, so you can show the controls were genuinely in place. All of it in one place, current and findable, so that if the worst ever does happen, the records that decide a fall claim are sitting there ready - not missing, not scattered, not lost. Complys keeps you compliant, and where working at height is concerned, that is exactly what keeps you covered.