22.03.2005

Lack of guardrails costs scaffold Company £9,000

Churchill Scaffolding Ltd has been fined £4,000 plus £4,696 costs at the City of London Magistrates Court following a prosecution brought by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) after an investigation into an accident where scaffolder, Dean Dale, aged 30 from Barking, suffered multiple injuries whilst erecting scaffolding around a residential building in College Crescent, South Hampstead, London.

Dale was working on the flat roof of the building when he stepped back onto an unguarded roof light, and fell approximately 15 feet onto a staircase. Churchill pleaded guilty to breaching:

-Regulation 7(2) of the Construction (Health, Safety and Welfare)
Regulations 1996 which makes it an offence not to provide suitable and sufficient guardrails, coverings or other similar means to prevent persons falling two metres or more through that fragile material where persons have to pass or work near fragile material.

and

-Regulation 3(1) of the Management of Health and Safety at Work
Regulations 1999, which makes it an offence not to make a suitable and sufficient assessment of the risks to the health and safety of persons at work with regard to the erection of scaffolding.

Following the prosecution, HSE Inspector Stuart Wright said:
"By failing to address the hazards that rooflights pose the company did not do enough to ensure their workers were not exposed to the unnecessary suffering that Mr Dale has had to endure.
"The dangers of working around rooflights are well known and easily avoidable by taking sensible steps such as using covers or guardrails to prevent falling through the fragile material.

Note:

There were 8 deaths and 140 major injuries caused by a fall through fragile materials in 2002/3 (the latest figures). In 2003/04 38 fatalities to workers in the construction industry were due to falling from a height, an increase of 5 from 2002/03. HSE's Construction Division has made its work to prevent falls arising from roofwork a priority