The seven-day statutory scaffold inspection requirement is one of the most consistently underdelivered elements of UK construction compliance. The regulatory position is clear. Under the Work at Height Regulations 2005 and the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015, scaffold used as a working platform must be inspected by a competent person before first use, after any event likely to have affected its stability, and at intervals not exceeding seven days while it remains in use. That position has been settled for over a decade.
In practice, inspection regimes vary widely. Some sites run them religiously. Others discover at handover or after an HSE visit that the inspection record is incomplete. The consequence of the second case is that the site's compliance position is weaker than the team thought it was, often only realised at the moment that consequence becomes expensive.
A compliant seven-day inspection is more than a walk past. It is a recorded assessment of the scaffold against a defined checklist. The inspector must be competent, which the HSE defines as having sufficient skill, knowledge, experience and training relevant to the type of scaffold being inspected. For tube and fitting scaffold, that competence is typically evidenced through CISRS Advanced Scaffold Inspection Training and Certification or equivalent. The record must be made on the day of the inspection, signed by the competent person, and retained until at least three months after the inspection.
The checklist itself should reflect the actual scaffold. A simple bricklayer's scaffold has a different inspection profile from a complex temporary roof. A loaded out gable end scaffold supporting brickwork has a different profile from an empty scaffold awaiting next phase. A competent inspector adjusts the focus accordingly. A box-ticking inspector does not, and the inspections then become evidence of effort rather than evidence of safety.
The other element often missed is the timing of the seven-day clock. The seven-day interval runs from the date of the previous inspection, not from the date the scaffold was first erected. If a scaffold was last inspected on a Tuesday, it must be inspected again no later than the following Tuesday. Where the seven days fall across a weekend or bank holiday, the inspection must still happen by the seven-day point, not on the next working day. This is where many regimes drift, particularly across Christmas and Easter periods.
Adverse weather adds a separate trigger. Where significant wind, snow or storm has affected the scaffold, a fresh inspection is required before the scaffold goes back into use, regardless of the position in the seven-day cycle. This applies even where there is no visible damage. The fact of the weather event is sufficient to require the inspection.
Globe Cambridge structures inspection scheduling around these triggers as a managed regime, not as a reactive process. Each scaffold on a site has a tracked inspection schedule. The competent inspector responsible for that scaffold is named in the scheme record. Adverse weather alerts are tied to a Met Office data feed for the site postcode, so that any weather event meeting the threshold automatically triggers an inspection requirement on the responsible inspector.
The inspection records themselves are produced in a format aligned to the principal contractor's CDM file requirements. Date, time, inspector, scaffold identifier, checklist items, findings, photographs, remedial actions and timeline for closure. This makes inspection records evidence rather than just compliance paperwork.
For developers and principal contractors, the practical risk of an inadequate inspection regime is the risk that emerges when something goes wrong. An incident on site triggers an investigation. The investigation looks for evidence of the safety system at the relevant moment. If the inspection record for the day before the incident does not exist, is informal, or cannot be cross-referenced to the responsible competent person, the chain of duty is weaker than it should be.
Procuring scaffold from a contractor with a verifiable seven-day inspection regime is the simplest way to address this. It is also a question worth asking at tender stage, before the contractor is appointed. The honest answer to that question is one of the more reliable predictors of how the rest of the contract will run.
Talk to Globe Cambridge To discuss the seven-day scaffold inspection regime on your site on your scheme, contact Globe Cambridge on 01223 890727 or email enquiries@theglobegroup.co.uk.
