In The News

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A construction company in Kent was fined after a sub-contractor fell and died from his injuries while working on the construction of houses in July 2017.

The man in his 50s was installing vertical hanging tiles, fell nearly two metres through an unguarded opening in the scaffold and landed on the ground below.

He suffered several broken ribs and serious internal injuries, including a punctured lung.

An investigation was done by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) Britain’s national regulator for workplace health and safety, who prevent work-related death, injury and ill health through regulatory actions, found the construction firm had not appointed a person with the necessary skills, knowledge, experience and training to manage the construction site, and that the company did not:

• Make sure that the scaffold’s working platform was safe throughout the project
• Maintain a safe working platform on the scaffold throughout the project by allowing multiple openings to be made and remain opened for several weeks
• Guard the openings, which created a significant risk of falling about 1.8 metres from the working platform.

The firm pleaded guilty to violating the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 and was fined £25,000and ordered to pay almost £84,000 in costs.

Concluding, the HSE principal inspector said “This tragic death could have been so easily avoided by implementing suitable site management to ensure that the scaffold was appropriately adapted by competent persons for the needs of the different sub-contractors. This case highlights that principal contractors should be aware that HSE will not hesitate to take appropriate enforcement action against those who fall below the required standards and do not plan, manage and monitor the construction phase effectively.”

Source – HSE.GOV.UK