Work at height – two separate incidents at one site

Work at height – two separate incidents at one site

Two workers injured following two separate work at height injuries at a national drinks company. One of the injuries occurred when a worker fell nearly four metres off a ladder whilst clearing a blockage in a chute for a grain silo. He was found unconscious on the floor and taken to hospital. Luckily he had very minor injuries and has returned to work. The other incident happened two months later when another worker was standing on the bonnet of a loading machine attempting to clean the roof. He slipped and fell more than two metres to the ground. He suffered a bleed on the brain and a shattered leg bone. He now suffers from short term memory loss but has also returned to work.

The investigation revealed that management were aware of the blockage issues and accessibility problems for their platform ladders but failed to identify that a safe method of working was not in place resulting in employees adopting unsafe practices for completing the work. With the other incident the court heard that the company had no risk assessments in place for the cleaning operation and had assumed that it would be done solely from the ground. Instructions of how to clean the machine had actually been passed down from one operator to the next during the initial operator training.

If the company had spoken to an operator about this task then they would have identified the dangers to the operators.

The company was fined a total of £18,000 for the two incidents for failing to provide work at height training, including risk assessments, believing that employees were competent to plan and carry out the work at height. However it is not sufficient for health and safety instructions merely to be given to workers; employers must also ensure those instructions are carried out.