Two companies have admitted failing to ensure part of a roof had in place edge protection, the absence of which led a worker to fall eight metres to the ground.
Taylor Pearson Construction Ltd was the principal contractor building a new retail unit at The Carlton Centre, in Lincoln. The company sub-contracted Roofwise (Bourne) Ltd to clad the roof.
On 24 May last year, a team of four workers was cladding the roof. Two workers were in the basket of a scissor lift and the other two were standing on the roof. Edge protection and safety netting had been installed around the majority of the roof, but an indented corner had been left unprotected.
One of the men was kneeling in a gutter, in the unprotected area of the roof, in order to install a fixing. He lost his balance and fell off the roof, striking the handrail of a scissor lift, before hitting the ground more than eight metres below.
He suffered a fractured pelvis, shattered heel and broken thumb. He spent several weeks in hospital and required several metal plates inserted to mend his fractures. He has been unable to return to work owing to his injuries.
The HSE visited the site two days later and found both companies had failed to agree on procedures to install edge protection around the part of the roof from where the worker had fallen. Roofwise thought timber roof trusses would be in place, which would have acted as edge protection. Taylor Pearson Construction suggested a bird-cage scaffold needed to be erected. Neither company came to a written agreement on the suggested method, nor did they monitor the work to ensure suitable edge protection was put in place in that area.
HSE inspector Tony Mitchell said: “Both defendants clearly identified the risk of a fall and the precautions that were needed, but had not fully followed this through on site. Several opportunities to identify and remedy this deficiency had been missed.
“The injured worker is lucky to be alive. There is no room for complacency when it comes to work at height.”
Taylor Pearson Construction appeared at Lincoln Magistrates’ Court on 22 August and pleaded guilty to breaching reg.22(1)(a) of the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2007. It was fined £5000 and ordered to pay costs of £1710.
Roofwise (Bourne) Ltd attended the same hearing and pleaded guilty to breaching reg.4(1)(c) of the Work at Height Regulations 2005. Receiving a fine of £3000, it was also required to pay £1710 in costs.
The Safety Conversation with SHP (previously the Safety and Health Podcast) aims to bring you the latest news, insights and legislation updates in the form of interviews, discussions and panel debates from leading figures within the profession.
Find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Google Podcasts, subscribe and join the conversation today!
It’s obvious the work was started without risk assessments done to provide a safe system of work. A failure for the the roofing contractors and a failure by the PC to to ask for one.
This smacks of management failure, profit and time over safety.
Why did the operatives continue when they knew it was unsafe? management will know the answers to that. The fine is nowhere high enough to act as a deterrent.
Why no HASWA s7 charge against the employee who fell?
And as Bob K writes, you’d expect a roofer to have at least a rudimentary knowledge of WAH.
Unbelievably low fines?
Catalogue of errors, specialist contractors, what more inefficiency needs to be determined?
And if a roofer is prepared to work from a leading edge without protection, you have to ask yourself why? had he done so before? Was it expected and or condoned previously?
All WAH requires competence, how was this assessed, obviously the supervision and operative in question were not or ignored thier training, or were instructed to work unsafely?
Continually amazed.
Roofwise?
I would strongly recommend rebranding after this gets about.
Again,I ask myself, why has other evident regulatory requirement been ignored, the WAH reg`s were developed to control such risk.
I am constantly amazed at the lack of collective failure, which results in nominal prosecution?
Any breach is liable to a 20k fine, how much more inept do you have to be to warrant a 20k fine?
Complete farce!
If the fine issued is relative to the cost of providing a correct and safe method of doing the works, many more companies will see it as worth ‘taking the chance’! They identified the risk but didn’t act – that’s negligence and should be prosecuted to the maximum.
And as for the roofers, one of them will never roof again because he is guilty of doing an unsafe act & the other three are guilty of watching that unsafe act and not stopping it!
They sould also be prosecuted!