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Cracks undetected by failure to implement thorough examination requirements
City and County Signs Ltd has been fined after a workman fractured his neck after falling from a vehicle-mounted lift. The 44-year-old employee was using the lift to remove a sign from a commercial property in Hucknall High Street when the incident happened.
He was standing in the basket and as it elevated a levelling rod, designed to maintain the basket horizontal at all times, fractured causing the basket to tip backwards. He fell 1.5m and fractured his neck.
HSE investigators found that City and County Signs Ltd had failed to ensure the vehicle-mounted lift was thoroughly examined in the six months before the incident.
Examination would have detected racks
City and County Signs Ltd, of Market Place, Bingham, Nottinghamshire, pleaded guilty to breaching Regulation 9(3)(a)(i) of the Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998. The company was fined £10,000 and ordered to pay costs of £8,032.
After the hearing HSE inspector Lorna Sherlock said:
“There is a legal requirement for all employers who use lifting equipment to ensure they have it thoroughly examined by a competent person every six months.
Had the company done this the cracks in the levelling rod would have been identified and repaired and this incident avoided. Instead, a worker suffered some nasty injuries which could have easily been much worse.”