WernerCo leads the way in new safety standards

With new safety legislation coming into force for the ladder industry in 2019, WernerCo has published a handy new guide to help customers understand these changes.

EN131 has been brought in to provide a harmonised standard, which will cover all types of portable ladders including those for professional and non-professional use.

WernerCo’s ‘EN131 - A Guide to UK Ladder Standards’ covers the changes to the legislation down exploring the three parts to the new standards including terms, types and functional sizes, testing, and marking and user instructions.

The guide goes into comprehensive detail on what it means for customers and for the market, and how users can identify products that are compliant with EN131.

Paul Bruton, Product Development Director at WernerCo, comments: “EN131 has been one of the biggest milestones we’ve seen within the ladder industry and it now helps to ensure that products on the marketplace are safe and reliant.

“Although many of our products were already compliant with the new EN131 legislation it gave us the perfect opportunity to revaluate our portfolio of access equipment and add additional features. We have then followed up with the EN131 guide to help our customers understand these new changes and why they were so important.”

Ladders certified to the withdrawn British Standards BS2037 and BS1139, often referred to as Class 1 and Class 3 will no longer be available, although stocks of products in the market place will continue to be sold through.

The guide is available to download online: EN131 Guide or is available as a hard copy from WernerCo.