Stairs: the most overlooked safety feature in the house

Nobody fits a cheap car seat to save a few pounds. We accept, without a second thought, that the thing that keeps a child safe is worth doing properly. A staircase is used far more often than a car seat, by everyone in the house, every single day, for the life of the home, and yet it is one of the first things value-engineered down when budgets are tight. This is not a scare page. It is a plain look at where the real risk on a staircase sits, and what actually makes one safe.

Who actually gets hurt on stairs

It is worth being accurate here rather than alarming. Two groups stand out, and for different reasons.

Young children. Public Health England recorded more than 11,000 emergency hospital admissions of under-fives from falls on stairs and steps over a five-year period. So injuries to small children on stairs are common. But the same data is reassuring on the worst outcome: deaths of under-fives from stair falls are very rare, and the fall deaths that do happen at that age are almost all from windows and balconies, not stairs. For toddlers, the honest message is injuries, not fatalities, and most of those are preventable with a gate and sensible guarding.

Older people. This is where the serious end sits. RoSPA estimates that falls on stairs and steps cause over 1,000 deaths a year in England and Wales, and the majority of those are among the over-65s, for whom falls are the leading cause of accidental injury. As people become less steady, a stair that is a little too steep, poorly lit, or without a good handrail stops being a minor fault and becomes a real hazard.

The car-seat point

Put those two groups together and the reframe is simple. The staircase is the piece of the house most guaranteed to be used by the most vulnerable people in it, the very young and the old, every day. We would not dream of cutting corners on a car seat for the same people. The staircase deserves the same instinct, and it rarely gets it, because it looks like a fixed part of the building rather than a piece of safety equipment. Getting it right is not expensive relative to what a house costs. Getting it wrong is the thing you cannot see until someone falls.

What actually makes a stair safe

Safety on a staircase is designed and built in, not added on, and it comes down to a handful of things:

• Compliant geometry. Consistent, correctly proportioned rise and going, and a pitch that is not too steep, so your feet meet the steps predictably. See the building regulations and rise, going and pitch.
• Proper guarding. A balustrade at the right height with gaps a 100mm sphere cannot pass, so a small child cannot slip through. See guarding requirements.
• Grip underfoot. A finish and, if needed, nosings that are not slippery, especially for anyone less steady. See finishes and slip.
• A good handrail. At a comfortable height and easy to grip, and a second rail on the wall side is a sensible help for older or less-steady users.
• Gates while children are small. A stair gate at the top and bottom during the toddler years is the single most effective step for that age group.