We've just finished a repointing job on an old mill chimney. It's possibly the most dangerous scaffold I've worked on.
It was designed, erected by a private company to our bosses spec, and on every lift the inside was given a toeboard, and two rails up to waist level, all the way around each of the 9 lifts.
In 26 years I've never hit my hand so many times raking out a wall due to the obstructions presented by these safety measures to prevent any of us falling down the 200mm gap between the platform and chimney.
Well, that wouldn't have happened anyway as we spent 3 days cutting up several hundred pounds worth of 12mm ply to cover every gap on every lift to stop a "fall through" hazard....which then became a trip hazard.
The worst of it is that it's just a 3-4 man team of blokes who work together all the time doing the pointing work, and we can't even remove a single board or rail to gain access to the areas between lifts, or any ties/braces briefly to point behind and then reinstate them or the scaffold company's insurance is invalid.
We've all got Part 1 scaffold certificates from the days gone by when we did our own up to 50m so we aint thicko novices who will remove handrails and walk away! Work has become so restricted, yet it's deemed safe to have to duck and weave between bracers on the lifts we work on. Bring back bamboo and hemp rope....