Westminster Compliance

In recent news an employee of a bread company was working alone in the storeroom when his colleagues heard a loud bang. They rushed into the room, and found him lying on the floor, bleeding from a severe head wound, with the stepladder next to him. He was taken to hospital but died several weeks later from his injuries.

The employer and the site manager admitted failing to provide a safe method of work.

HSE inspectors visited the bakery the day after the incident and found that the ladder was in a poor condition, as its stiles were bent and damaged. Their investigation also found that no risk assessments had been carried out for any work at the site. They issued a Prohibition Notice, requiring no further work at height to be undertaken at the site until a safe system of work had been created, and suitable equipment had been provided.

Both the employer and site manager appeared in court and both were fined with separate breaches of sections of HSWA 1974.

Last week saw some serious accidents in the Haulage & Construction industries resulting in death.

A lorry driver was killed when two steel safety gates fell off his vehicle and landed on him during an inadequately planned lifting operation. When the lorry driver arrived at the garden centre he removed the securing straps from his freight and began to assist a forklift truck driver in unloading the gates. He directed the forklift driver to ensure that the forks were positioned underneath one of the two stacks of gates. It is believed he then walked around to the far side of the lorry to place the straps inside a storage box, which was located next to the fuel tank. As he was bending over to open the box, the forklift’s prongs extended beyond the first pile of gates and struck the second pile, causing four of the gates to fall off the lorry. Two of the gates landed on the lorry driver, who died at the scene as a result of serious neck injuries.

The Haulage company  pleaded guilty to breaching s2(1) of the HSWA 1974 and was fined £13,000. The  Steelwork company where the freight had been collected from pleaded guilty to breaching s3(1) of the Act and was fined £40,000.

A construction worker has been left blind in one eye after falling three metres from a tower scaffold. The HSE visited the scene on the day of the incident and found there was no edge protection on the containers, the scaffold had indequate footing, and the ladder had not been secured to the platform. They issued a Prohibition Notice, which required work to stop until it was properly planned.

The investigation also found that the internal works on the project had been planned and carried out safely, with a scissor lift provided to enable employees to work at height. According to HSE inspector, the incident could have been avoided if the worker had been provided with the same equipment.
The Company in question pleaded guilty to breaching s3(1) of the HSWA 1974, and reg. 4(1) of the Work at Height Regulations 2005. It was fined £7000 for each offence and ordered to pay £8832 in costs.

Following two recent court cases where regular checks/examinations on simple items of lifting equipment –  (manual hoists & slings in these two cases) were not carried out resulted in one death & total fines of £45,000.

This has lead to recent warning from LEEA (The Lifting Equipment Engineers Association) warning employers that they could pay a high price for neglecting lifting equipment.

Such equipment which was involved in these two cases, thorough examination is unlikely to be a particularly time consuming or an expensive operation. However whatever the equipment, under LOLER (Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998) it must be done by a genuinely independent and competent person, and a written report of the thorough examination kept on file by the employer.