Safety Nets & Soft Landing Systems — The UK Rules for Working at Height (2026)

Where Safety Nets Sit in the Work at Height Hierarchy

The Work at Height Regulations 2005 do not let you pick whatever fall protection is cheapest or quickest. They impose a strict hierarchy, and you must work down it in order, only dropping to the next level when the one above is not reasonably practicable. The duty holder has to be able to justify why each higher measure was ruled out.

• Avoid working at height altogether — design it out, assemble at ground level, use long-reach tools.
• Prevent falls using collective measures — guardrails, working platforms, scaffold edge protection and tower systems that stop a person reaching a fall edge.
• Minimise the distance and consequences of a fall using collective fall arrest — safety nets and soft-landing systems that catch a falling worker and protect everyone in the area at once.
• Personal fall arrest as a last resort — harness, lanyard and anchor, which only protect the one person wearing it correctly and clipped on.

Safety nets sit above harnesses in that order for good reason. They are a collective measure — they protect every operative working over them, not just one. They are passive — once rigged, they work whether or not the worker remembers to clip on, repositions an anchor or selects the correct lanyard length. And because they catch the body close to the work surface, they reduce the fall distance dramatically. A harness, by contrast, depends entirely on human behaviour. That is why a competent designer or principal contractor should always reach for nets before defaulting to harnesses.

Safety Nets: Rigged Under the Work to BS EN 1263

A safety net is rigged underneath the work area — beneath a steel or timber frame during erection, beneath a roof being sheeted or felted, beneath any deck where operatives could fall through or off. The net hangs ready to catch a falling worker before they reach the floor or the next level down. Nets used in UK construction must comply with BS EN 1263 (Part 1 covers the net itself and its performance; Part 2 covers the rigging requirements).

Two principles govern how a net is rigged. First, the net must be fixed as close as reasonably practicable to the underside of the work — typically no more than about 2 metres below the working level. The closer the net, the shorter the fall before it catches you, and the lower the forces involved. Second, there must be enough clearance and sag space below the net for it to deflect safely without the worker hitting the floor or an obstruction beneath. If there is a slab, beam or scaffold tube within the deflection zone, the net cannot do its job. Calculating the required clearance is part of the rigger's plan, not a guess on the day.

Where panels meet, nets must be joined or overlapped correctly using the manufacturer's coupling cord or specified ties so there is no gap a body could pass through. Edge-to-edge butting without a proper join is a common and dangerous defect. The same applies at the perimeter — the net must be tied off to a sound structural anchor at the correct spacing, not lashed to whatever is handy.

Competent Riggers and the FASET Scheme

Safety nets are not something a general gang rigs in passing. Under the regulations, nets must be installed and inspected by trained, competent net riggers. The recognised industry standard for this competence in the UK is the FASET scheme (Fall Arrest Safety Equipment Training) — the trade body and training organisation for the safety netting and soft-landing sector. A FASET-trained and registered rigging company is what a principal contractor should be asking for, and what a competent client should expect to see named in the construction phase plan.

A properly run net installation produces a clear paper trail. Expect to see:

• A rigging plan drawn up before work starts, setting out anchor points, clearance/deflection calculations, sequence and access.
• A handover certificate signed by the rigger confirming the net is installed correctly and safe to work over, with the date and the area covered.
• Tags on each net showing the net's identity, conformity to BS EN 1263 and its test/manufacture details.

If you cannot point to who rigged the net, when, and to what plan, you do not have a compliant system — you have a hazard with a false sense of security underneath it.

Inspection: When and What to Check

A safety net is only as good as its current condition, and condition degrades fast on a live site. Nets must be inspected by a competent person after installation and before first use, after any alteration, repositioning or impact (including after a person or object has fallen into it), and at suitable regular intervals while in service. A net that has arrested a fall or taken a heavy debris load must be taken out of use and re-inspected before anyone works over it again.

The inspection looks for physical damage (cuts, abrasion, burnt mesh from hot works and grinding sparks), UV degradation of the synthetic fibres, accumulated debris and water loading the net, and the integrity of the joins, border ropes and ties. The inspector also checks the net's test and ID tag and its dates — a net beyond its test interval, or whose tag is missing or unreadable, cannot be verified as fit for purpose and should be rejected.

Soft-Landing Systems: Airbags and Bean Bags

Soft-landing systems are the collective fall-arrest option for internal work where rigging a suspended net is impractical — most commonly during house building, when operatives are laying floor joists, fixing decking or working on the first-floor structure of a dwelling. The system fills the space below the work with inflatable airbags or bean bags (loose-fill polystyrene bags) so that anyone falling lands on a cushioned surface rather than a hard floor.

The critical requirements are coverage and depth. The bags must cover the entire area below where someone could fall, leaving no gaps — including against walls, around openings and at the junctions between bags. They must be the correct depth for the fall height; too shallow and the worker bottoms out onto the floor through the bags. As with nets, the coverage should be checked and re-checked as joists go in and the working area changes through the day.

Limitations and the Duty to Rescue

Collective fall arrest catches a fall — it does not end the emergency. A worker who falls into a net or onto a soft-landing system must be recovered promptly. Someone left suspended or stranded in a net can be injured by the fall itself or by the recovery being botched, so a rescue plan and the means to carry it out must be in place before anyone works over the system. Rescue is part of the risk assessment, not an afterthought.

Two further limitations catch people out. First, debris in nets: offcuts, tools, fixings and rubbish dropped into a net add load, can injure anyone who then falls in, and accelerate wear. Nets must be kept clear, and operatives reminded that the net is not a bin. Second, and most important, a net is not a working platform. It is a fall-arrest device, not somewhere to stand, store materials or walk across. Treating a net as a deck is a serious misuse that can overload it and put the rigging at risk.

Quick Reference: The Work at Height Hierarchy

The order is the law, not a preference. If you have specified harnesses where a net was reasonably practicable, you have not met the hierarchy — and that is exactly the gap an HSE inspector looks for after an incident.

Practical Compliance Tips

On a live job the difference between a compliant system and a paperwork exercise comes down to a handful of disciplines that the best contractors do every time:

• Name the netting company in the plan. Use a FASET-registered rigger and record them in the construction phase plan and risk assessment.
• Demand the handover certificate. Do not let anyone work over a net until you hold a signed certificate covering that specific area and date.
• Check the tag and the clearance. No tag, or insufficient deflection space below the net, means it does not get used.
• Re-inspect after any impact. Treat a fall, a dropped load or a repositioning as a trigger for re-inspection, not a reason to crack on.
• Keep nets clean. Brief operatives that debris and offcuts go in a bin, never the net.
• Have a rescue plan ready. Know exactly how a person will be recovered from the net or bags before work starts above them.

The Consequences of Getting It Wrong

The stakes here are not theoretical. Falls from height are consistently the leading cause of fatal injury in UK construction, and the HSE treats fall-protection failures as among the most serious breaches it investigates. A poorly rigged net, a missing handover certificate, an unqualified rigger or a soft-landing system with gaps are precisely the failings that surface in prosecutions after a worker is killed or seriously injured.

Under the Health & Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 and the Work at Height Regulations 2005, duty holders — principal contractors, employers and the self-employed — face unlimited fines and, in the most serious cases, imprisonment. Sentencing guidelines tie penalties to turnover and culpability, so a large contractor can face fines running into hundreds of thousands of pounds for a single fall-from-height failure. Collective fall arrest, properly specified and rigged, is one of the most effective controls you can put in place — and one of the easiest for an inspector to prove was missing if you skip it.