10/04/2026
When you're working over 130 ft above the floor of a 900-year-old cathedral, the fire brigade can't reach you. Neither can the ambulance crew.
Not quickly enough anyway.
The access routes to some of the areas we work in are spiral staircases and narrow stone passages that were built for craftsmen, not for stretchers.
If someone has a fall, a heart attack, or any kind of medical episode at height inside a building like this, the normal emergency response doesn't apply.
So we bring our own.
The person in this photo is from a specialist rescue company that we engage on heritage projects with restricted access. These are the same people who go into mines when things go wrong.
Advanced first aiders, rope access specialists, and they're not on call somewhere waiting for a phone to ring. They're on site with us, rigging set up, stretcher ready, the entire time our team is working at height.
If the worst happened the guys from MRS Training & Rescue can stabilise the patient, keep them alive and get them to the ground to hand them over to the emergency services.
It's not something most people would ever think about when they see scaffolding on a Cathedral. But if you're responsible for sending people to work in those conditions, you have to plan for it.
That mindset comes from working in remote locations, where the coastguard helicopter is two hours away and the nearest hospital is further than that. It's on us to look after ourselves in these situations.
You don't hope for the best. You prepare for the worst and make sure you have the right people around you that can handle it.
It's the same approach whether we're working in a confined space on an industrial site, or inside a building that's stood for nearly a thousand years.
No-nonsense scaffolding & access solutions.
Premier Access Scaffolding Ltd
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🗺️ Operating out of Lincoln, covering the whole of the UK
⏰ 24/7–365 Scaffolding Support
📱 01522 542244
🖥️ www.premieraccess.co.uk
