Health and Safety Failings – Work at Height breaches lead to serious injuries and a £60,000 fine

Work at Height breaches lead to serious injuries and a £60,000 fine. 

Key facts: 

• A cleaning firm employee suffered life changing injuries after falling six metres through a fragile roof-light.
• The HSE said that ‘the limited safety measures taken to protect the workforce were grossly inadequate’.
• The company was fined £60,000 and £5,471 for multiple breaches of the Work at Height Regulations.

The Case:

A cleaning firm’s failure to comply to work at height regulations has resulted in a worker suffering life-changing injuries in an incident on 11 December 2013.

The cleaning firm had been hired by a car rental premises to clean their 24 acrylic roof-lights and sent a small team to complete the work. The HSE investigator said that the company had no experience in working on fragile roofs, and had not taken the appropriate steps to ensure safe work at height.

The team were using a mobile elevating platform to get to the roof, and had taken up just six scaffold boards to stand on whilst jet-washing the lights. There was a lack of planning, training, or understanding of the risks of work at height – adequate safety precautions had not been taken.

Having inspected a cleaned light from below, the worker returned to the roof where he inadvertently stepped on one of the roof-lights which he fell through, landing six metres below on the concrete floor below.

The failure to ensure safe work at height led to serious, life-changing injuries for the worker, with the HSE saying that ‘there is no doubt that this could have been a fatality’. The worker suffered a complex skull fracture, brain damage, multiple arm and wrist fractures and several broken ribs. He lost his sense of smell and taste, has impaired sight in one eye and is now entirely deaf in one ear. He needed to be put into an induced coma and was in hospital for almost two months. He is now unable to work.

After the incident, a Prohibition Notice was served to the cleaning firm halting any further work until work at height safety measures had been improved. The following HSE investigation suggested that the company could have hired a mobile working platform with an extended reach. This would have made it unnecessary to go on the roof at all. If this was not possible, the work at height could have been made safe by the use of proper crawling boards with handrails and netting inside the building.

The case was heard at Eastbourne Magistrates’ Court on 6 March 2015 where the company was prosecuted for several breaches of the Work at Height Regulations. They pleaded guilty to three breaches and were fined £60,000 and £5,741 in costs.

What the HSE inspector had to say:

Speaking after the hearing the HSE Inspector Amanda Huff stated that:

“The victim of this case suffered life-threatening, and now life-changing, injuries and there is no doubt that this could have been a fatality.

Cleansafe Services is a commercial company operating throughout the country but had no experience of working on fragile roofs. The risk assessment was not fit for the purpose and the result was the limited safety measures it took to protect the workforce were grossly inadequate.

It is unacceptable for firms to put their employees at needless risk. There are several people killed each year and many more badly injured falling through fragile roofs. Work should be planned so no one needs to get onto the roof. Where it is necessary, safeguards such as edge protection, safety nets and roof stagings must be used.”

What the law states:

Regulation 4(1)(a) of the Work at Height Regulations 2005 states:

Every employer shall ensure that work at height is properly planned.

Regulation 4(1)(b) of the Work at Height Regulations 2005 states:

Every employer shall ensure that work at height is appropriately supervised.

Regulation 4(1)(c) of the Work at Height Regulations 2005 states:

Every employer shall ensure that work at height is carried out in a manner which is, so far as is reasonably practicable, safe.

Further information from the HSE on work at height can be found here.

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