Posted By: djhI suspect the electricty whatever-organisation-it-is isn't worried about whether people climb their poles and electrocute themselves. They simply want to be able to defend themselves against a charge of negligence if they do. "These chaps left a pole sitting there; it's an open invitation to climb it, m'lud".

Exactly what I thought when I read

Posted By: WillInAberdeenBut I never did understand why they put notices on power poles, if someone is going to the trouble of climbing a power pole then a stern notice won't put them off?!

Mmm, in my experience of the H&S at W Act, there is a hierarchy of protective measures, and warning signs are considered to be the "administrative" layer which is the second-least adequate.

If there was an accident and the company relied on having put up a warning notice, they'd get very little sympathy from the Health and Safety Exec, who'd want to know why they hadn't used the "engineering" layer to physically restrict access (with barbed wire in this case), or "eliminated" the risk in some more foolproof way.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hierarchy_of_hazard_controls