The HSE is urging construction workers not to take their children on to building sites during school holidays after a 10-year-old boy was spotted on scaffolding in Merseyside.
On 20 February this year, an HSE inspector was passing a construction site in Kirkby when he saw a young boy with his father on a scaffold, which was erected around a three-bedroom house.
The inspector ordered the man, who can’t be named in order to protect the child’s identity, to stop work and help his son down from the six-metre-high structure.
The man had taken his son to work with him during the spring half-term holiday, and allowed him to climb the scaffolding while he fitted edging, known as barge boards, to the edge of the pitched roof.
His son was seen shimmying along a narrow plank on the scaffolding, gripping the frame to prevent him falling, as he made his way towards the top of a ladder where his dad was waiting for him.
The ladder was about 30cm too short to reach the lowest working platform on the scaffolding. This meant the builder had to hold his son’s ankles and place his feet on to the rungs of the ladder to make sure he did not fall, or miss his footing.
HSE inspector Matt Greenly carried out an immediate inspection and found multiple safety failings. As well as discovering that the ladder and scaffold were not secure, he identifed missing handrails, and a lack of boards to prevent tools from falling to the ground.
He issued an immediate Prohibition Notice, which required the builder to dismantle the scaffold as it was in an unsafe condition. Inspector Greenly said: “We understand it can be difficult to find things to keep children occupied during the school holidays but taking them into potentially dangerous workplaces isn’t the answer.
“The ten-year-old boy could easily have been seriously injured, or even killed if he had slipped and fallen from the scaffolding, but he trusted that his dad knew what he was doing.”
The builder appeared at Liverpool Magistrates’ Court on 11 July and pleaded guilty to breaching s3(2) of the HSWA 1974. He was ordered to carry out 80 hours of community service within 12 months, and pay £200 towards costs.
After the hearing, inspector Greenly added: “The incident would have been bad enough if the scaffolding had been erected safely but it was not and, as a result, the builder put his own life at risk, as well as his son’s.”
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To be fair £200 costs is a lot less than childcare costs for an entire school holiday. Quite a bargain for this chap.
I’d like to know how inspectors always seem to be “passing by”. We tried to get an inspector to come out and look at some very unsfafe building practice going on, including fitting soffits and guttering using a plank supported by two ladders and couldn’t get past the person who took the phone call at HSE. They could not put us through to the relevant people!
If allowing your ten year old son to clamber around on unsafe scaffolding is being a “good dad”, I’d hate to think what being a bad one would entail!
I don’t understand how anybody could describe this as Health and Safety gone too far. Had the child fallen it is very likely that hew would not have survived. The action taken in this case was fully justified a proportianate in my opinion. I agree that there are plent of examples of “Health and Safety gone mad”, but these are usually where H&S is used as an excuse not to do something and do not involve the HSE!
I’m not sure the scales of justice are at all balanced here.
A working man, trying to earn a crust and be a good Dad at the same time. Accepted, the platform was unsafe and, as a deterent to others, the fine, the publicity, the embarrassing court appearance -sufficient.
The community service in addition, however, is OTT and only serves to alienate the British public from the enforcement services.
It’s Health & Safety going too far. Again!
Fm: Cork, Ireland.