Someone Could Fall Through That Rooflight: What to Do Now
If someone could fall through a rooflight, stop anyone going on or near it now: restrict access to that part of the roof, and cover or net the rooflight from above or below so a fall is arrested. Brief every contractor and maintenance worker that the rooflight is fragile before they go up. These are interim controls. The permanent fix is replacement with a documented non-fragile assembly. Never treat the rooflight as a walking surface, and do not test it by standing near it.
This answer sits under our commercial skylight installation service. It sets out real control measures and the duty holder’s obligations. It is not a substitute for a competent safety assessment of your roof, which you should arrange.
Immediate control measures
Falls through fragile rooflights remain one of the most consistent causes of death and life-changing injury in building maintenance, and a rooflight that looks sound can still be fragile. Until it is replaced or a competent assessment clears it, control the risk.
- Restrict access. Stop anyone going onto that part of the roof. Physically prevent access where you can, control it with a permit-to-work where you cannot, and make clear that the area is off limits without specific control measures in place.
- Cover or net the rooflight. A proprietary rooflight cover or guard fitted over the rooflight, or safety netting slung beneath it, arrests a fall so a person who does go through, or onto, the rooflight is caught. These are established measures and they are fitted by people who are themselves protected from the fall while they work.
- Brief everyone who goes up. Every contractor, maintenance worker and roofer must be told, before they go on the roof, which surfaces are fragile and where. A fragile roof is only safe if the people on it know. Mark it, record it, and include it in the permit and the site induction.
- Assume fragile unless proven otherwise. If you cannot show a current non-fragility record for the assembly and know its age, treat it as fragile. An undated rooflight of unknown origin is a fragile surface for planning purposes.
Never walk on or near a suspect rooflight, and never test it by standing on it. A rooflight can look serviceable, keep the rain out, and no longer hold a person, because non-fragility is a tested assembly classification that degrades with age and the degradation is invisible. Standing on it, or near enough to fall onto it, is exactly how the fatal accidents happen. Access across the roof is planned on staging or a platform that spans the rooflights, so nobody’s weight is ever on the rooflight itself.
The duty holder’s obligations
Whoever controls the building carries duties for the fragile roof. Under the Work at Height Regulations 2005 and the general duties of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, managing the risk of falls through fragile surfaces means, in practice:
- Knowing which surfaces on your roof are fragile.
- Recording it, so the knowledge does not leave with one person.
- Communicating it to anyone who goes on the roof, before they go.
- Controlling the risk by preventing access, or protecting against a fall with covers, guards or nets, or removing the risk by replacing the fragile surface.
Where work on or near the roof falls under the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015, the fragile-roof risk is part of the planning and the documentation. The interim controls above manage the risk; they do not discharge the duty to deal with it. A documented, controlled fragile roof with a plan to replace it is a defensible position. An unmanaged one is not. Our what non-fragile means answer covers the classification behind this.
The permanent fix: non-fragile replacement
Covers, nets and access restriction are interim measures. They control the risk while the rooflight stays fragile, but they do not remove it, and they need maintaining and checking. The permanent answer is to replace the fragile rooflight with a documented non-fragile assembly, so the roof is no longer a fall risk and can be recorded as such.
Replacement is specified as an assembly, at your actual spans and fixing pattern, with the classification recorded against the installed configuration and the installation date noted so the degradation clock has a documented start. That gives you a rooflight that arrests a fall and a record that proves it, which is what lets the roof be managed with confidence rather than caution. Our non-fragile rooflight specification page covers how that is done, and because non-fragility degrades, replacement is the intervention that resets it.
What it means around Ipswich
Most of the industrial stock across Ipswich, the port estates and the Suffolk and north Essex estates runs on rooflights installed between the 1970s and early 2000s, now old enough that any original non-fragility has degraded away, and very few buildings hold any record for them. In practice this means many roofs across the region carry a fall-through risk that has never been assessed. On the coastal belt near Felixstowe, shorter sheet life brings that forward. If you have identified a rooflight someone could fall through, you are ahead of many duty holders, and the controls above are the right immediate response while replacement is arranged.
What do I do right now about a rooflight someone could fall through?
Restrict access to that part of the roof so nobody goes on or near it, fit a proprietary cover or guard over the rooflight or net beneath it to arrest a fall, and brief every contractor and maintenance worker that it is fragile before they go up. Treat it as fragile unless a competent assessment proves otherwise. Then arrange non-fragile replacement as the permanent fix.
Is a rooflight cover or net enough on its own?
As an interim control, yes, it arrests a fall while the rooflight stays fragile, but it does not remove the risk and it needs maintaining and checking. The permanent answer is to replace the fragile rooflight with a documented non-fragile assembly, so the roof is no longer a fall risk and can be recorded as safe. Covers buy time; replacement resolves it.
Get the fragile rooflight replaced
Interim controls hold the risk. Non-fragile replacement removes it. We survey the roof, grade every position, and come back with a replacement scope and a documented non-fragility record for the installed configuration.
Request an urgent survey. Read across to what non-fragile means, when to replace industrial rooflights, and the non-fragile specification guide.
Thinking about this job? We survey across Ipswich, Suffolk and north Essex and give you a fixed price before any work starts, with a 10-year workmanship guarantee.