Plastic manholes are gaining an increasing market share in installation. They are competitive to concrete manholes especially because of their less dead load. Currently, there is no European standard available with a self-contained design approach for showing structural integrity of plastic manholes. Especially verification for uplift by water pressure is of significant meaning for these products due to the relatively little dead load. The challenge in structural analysis is to incorporate the shear forces within the backfill soil as this is essential for uplift calculations but at the same time not being in contrast to Eurocode rules which are restrictive with regard to soil shear forces in this load case. The paper presents and evaluates test results from full scale and 1:10 scale pull-out tests on plastic manholes under uplifting forces by water pressure. An approach of using the obvious shear forces in design is introduced. This approach is justified by looking at design criteria for tension piles in Eurocode. An example for practical design is given.