A YOUNG designer has come up with an idea to stop people falling off ladders.

Luca Volpe, aged 19, of Besford, near Pershore, has won through to the Young Engineers for Britain national finals with his invention, Ladder Aid, which could reduce the number of people falling off ladders.

While working towards his design and technology A-level at RGS Worcester, Mr Volpe won the East Midlands regional round with his innovative product to make it to the national finals.

Ladder Aid is a device that attaches to ladders to signal the safest angle it should be set at to stop it collapsing. In the last year for which figures were available, there were more than 40,000 falls from ladders in the UK.

Mr Volpe said: “I am always coming up with ideas for products, I have hundreds of them in my head."

Mr Volpe, who is now studying mechanical engineering at Bath University, was encouraged by his teachers, including head of design and technology David Cotterill.

Mr Cotterill said: “Luca’s design solves a real need for DIY enthusiasts, construction workers, cleaners and maintenance staff in all industries. It’s functional, practical and a darn good piece of engineering.”

When describing the steps it took to arrive at the finished product Mr Volpe said: “I researched what other products were already available and found one that was both time-consuming and difficult to use. This led me to focus on designing a product that could be easily used by people on both a commercial and domestic scale.”

The next step was to determine the angle a ladder should be placed at in order to maximise safety. According to UK Government Health and Safety guidelines the safest angle is 75 degrees. Once the angle was established the main challenge for Mr Volpe was how to represent that figure in a visual format that could be easily used and understood.

Mr Volpe created a number of prototypes and focused on the one he thought worked best – a traffic light system consisting of three lights, two red and one green, to highlight when the correct angle has been reached. Safety features were added including flashing red LEDs alerting pedestrians to the position of the ladder in poor light.

The finals will be held in March.