Safety net
Also called Fall arrest net, Safety netting
A safety net is a collective safeguard for arresting falls — rigged beneath a work area so that anyone who falls is caught, without each worker having to be attached to anything. Under the Work at Height Regulations 2005 that class of measure is the one an employer must give priority to over personal protection such as a harness and lanyard, and a net is the form of it most commonly used on steel-framed buildings.
The UK position
The legal category is the useful part and it is easy to miss. Schedule 4 of the Work at Height Regulations 2005 is titled "Requirements for collective safeguards for arresting falls", and that is what a safety net is in law rather than merely one option among several. Schedule 4 of the Work at Height Regulations 2005 requires such a safeguard to be suitable and of sufficient strength to arrest safely the fall of any person who is liable to fall; requires its anchors, and the means of attachment to them, to be suitable and of sufficient strength and stability to support the foreseeable loading both in arresting any fall and during any subsequent rescue; and, where the safeguard distorts in arresting a fall, requires it to afford sufficient clearance. The product standard is a separate document in two parts, and neither is the law: BS EN 1263-1:2014 covers safety requirements and test methods, and BS EN 1263-2:2014 covers safety requirements for the positioning limits. BS EN 1263-1:2014 and BS EN 1263-2:2014 were both published on 31 December 2014, and BSI lists both as Current, Under Review. What is inside those two documents — mesh sizes, test masses, energy figures, border rope forces — is behind BSI’s paywall, and this page reproduces none of it. Figures of that kind are all over netting suppliers’ websites; a figure on a supplier’s blog is somebody else’s copy of a paywalled document, not a source.
Cited by number and title:
- The Work at Height Regulations 2005, Schedule 4 — Requirements for collective safeguards for arresting falls
- BS EN 1263-1:2014 — Temporary works equipment. Safety nets. Safety requirements, test methods
- BS EN 1263-2:2014 — Temporary works equipment. Safety nets. Safety requirements for the positioning limits
Where it matters on site
On a steel frame the net is usually the primary fall protection, and the question that decides whether the arrangement actually works is not the net. It is what happens in the minutes after it catches somebody. A person caught in a net who is uninjured can generally climb out unaided; a person who cannot is lying in a distorted net above a floor, and getting them out is a rescue operation, not something the netting subcontractor left behind a tick box. That is why Schedule 4 of the Work at Height Regulations 2005 attaches its anchor strength requirement to the foreseeable loading during any subsequent rescue as well as during the fall itself — the law assumes somebody will be coming to get them. Our Safety Net Recovery System exists for exactly that case, and the training that comes with it is the part worth booking before the net goes up rather than after.