CLIENT AND CONTRACTOR BOTH ACCOUNTABLE FOR FALL
Prosecutions follows yet another fragile roof fall and disabling injuries
A farmer and a contractor have been fined after a workman suffered multiple head injuries and was left blind in one eye following a 5m fall through a fragile roof on 9 July 2012.
The 31-year-old man was involved in repairing the roof when a corrugated cement roof sheet failed under his weight at Lady Booth Hall Farm in Derbyshire . He fell to the concrete floor below and was airlifted to hospital.
Buxton Magistrates heard (19 Mar) that contractor Craig Allsop failed to plan the work safely and relied on walking over the purlins using the line of bolts as a guide. The court was told that ‘crawling boards’ should have been used combined with other safety measures e.g. fall arrest nets, guard rails, harnesses etc to prevent injury.
Client failed to do enough to secure contractor safety
Craig Allsop, 37, of Ashbourne, was fined £3,000 and ordered to pay £800 in prosecution costs after pleading guilty to a breach of the Work at Height Regulations 2005.
John Shirt, the 62 year old farm owner, breached the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 by failing to do more to ensure the safety of the people he had contracted to repair the roof. He was fined £2,500 and ordered to pay costs of £800.
Speaking after the hearing, HSE Inspector Andrew Bowker said:
“Walking along the line of roof bolts above the timber purlins was a highly dangerous way to carry out the work on the fragile roof, and the only surprise is that the two men managed to complete most of the day’s work before one of them crashed through and was injured.
The worker suffered severe head injuries as a result of the fall which will affect him for the rest of his life, but he could easily have been killed. Craig Allsop was in control of the work but had a complacent attitude towards the safety of himself and the injured worker.
The owner of the farm, John Shirt, should also have done more to make sure the work would be carried out safely. Mr Shirt knew that his barn roof was constructed from fragile cement sheets but he failed to ensure the work was properly planned and that a safe system of work was used.”
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May 30th, 2013 at 7:27 am
[…] CLIENT AND CONTRACTOR BOTH ACCOUNTABLE FOR FALL […]