12.09.2012

UK Platforms fined for fall

One of the UK’s largest access rental companies – UK Platforms – has been fined £8,000 plus costs after an employee was injured after he fell from an aerial work platform at the company's depot in Halesfield, Telford.

The 42-year-old man, who does not wish to be named, was standing on the aerial lift's engine canopy in order to work on the boom when he slipped and fell two metres, landing on a concrete floor. He suffered a compression fracture to his skull, which caused bleeding on his brain and fractured four vertebrae, four ribs and his collarbone.

The man was in hospital for nearly two weeks and was off work for around nine months after the incident on 28th March 2011.

A Health & Safety Executive investigation into the incident found UK Platforms had failed to plan or supervise the work properly and there was no protection to stop the man from falling from the machine.

UK Platforms pleaded guilty to breaching Regulation 4(1) of the Work at Height Regulations 2005 and yesterday was fined £8,000 and ordered to pay £5,888 costs.

HSE inspector Katharine Walker said after the hearing: "Almost a year after this entirely avoidable incident, a man is still unable to work and may not make a full recovery from these life-changing injuries. Companies must ensure that work at height is properly planned and supervised and carried out safely to prevent falls. If UK Platforms had used another powered access platform alongside the cherry picker, the incident would never have happened.”

"It is unacceptable to see such failings, particularly as UK Platforms hires out access equipment for working safely at height and therefore should have known how to carry out this job."

Vertikal Comment

This is an interesting one, we have heard from UK Platforms that its normal method of working on the booms was to use one of the company’s scissor lifts which were readily available on the day.

Instead the employee, for whatever reason, chose to climb onto the curved cover of the lift, in order to reach the boom and subsequently slipped off. It would appear that the HSE then decided to make an example of the company, and cited it for not having written procedures of how to carry out the specific job that the man was doing – even though he was experienced, had been trained and had ready access to the appropriate equipment.

This in spite of the fact that it has clearly stated that it does not want to see reams of backside-covering paperwork when investigating, but that it is more interested in encouraging good working practices and penalising those that clearly set out to cut corners.

On the surface this prosecution and the apparent untruths regarding the man’s ability to work is a serious discredit to the HSE and flies in the face of what it claims to be doing and what it should be doing. This is a workshop that is clean, well equipped with the latest work at height equipment and the man, an engineer with the company, has been back at work in his job for several months now.

There may well have been a case to answer here, and someone in that workshop should have said “Hey get a lift over to reach the boom” – or the culture should have prevented him from even considering climbing on the cover.

However rather than spending time on protracted prosecutions where the company would almost certainly have implemented any regulations immediately and fully, the HSE should be spending its time and effort focusing on companies where corners are always cut and where work at height equipment is non-existent.

All this prosecution has done is spend precious public resources on an easy target and will probably prompt a regime of defensive paperwork within this company and others, none of which makes the world a safer place.

At the same time the agency is inexplicably lenient with other rental companies, even after fatalities have occurred, when everyone knows the standards at such companies are shocking, with corners cut as a matter of policy.

It seems that not only is the HSE still hell-bent on prosecutions and paperwork, over genuinely improving safety but it is also selective in who it goes after.