Company fined after accident
A building company has been fined £6,500 after two self-employed bricklayers working for it fell off scaffolding.
The incident happened on December 8 last year, while the two men, Darren Bird and James Allies, were contracted to help build houses at a small development in Normanton, near Bottesford, by Loughborough Cairns Heritage Homes No2 Limited.
The bricklayers were working on a wall and finishing off the brickwork.
Mr Bird had opened the scaffold's loading bay gate ready for mortar to be lifted up to him and Mr Allies, when they felt the scaffold shake.
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Mr Bird fell against Mr Allies, and both men fell into the first floor of the house. Mr Bird, 43, of Newstead Village, Nottingham, suffered severe bruising and tissue damage to his hip, pelvis and neck, and cuts to his face, arm and stomach.
He has only recently returned to work and doctors have said he will require long-term physiotherapy.
Mr Allies, 44, of Wollaton, Nottingham, suffered muscle and nerve damage to his neck and back and bruised his shoulder, leg, face and arms. He has not yet returned to work.
Leicester magistrates were told yesterday that a Health and Safety Executive (HSE) investigation had found that, although the company had a policy of installing fall protection nets when installing roof trusses, there was no such protection where the men fell.
Cairns Heritage Homes No2 Limited, of Old Parsonage Lane, Horton, Loughborough, pleaded guilty to breaching regulations. Magistrates fined the company £6,500 and ordered it to pay costs of £1,836.
After the hearing, HSE inspector Tony Mitchell said: "This incident could have been prevented by thinking through the need for fall protection for the whole job, not just part of it.
"This was a high-risk activity and builders should not become complacent about ensuring that adequate safety measures are in place for the full duration of the work.
"Unfortunately, this lack of forethought resulted in two men receiving debilitating injuries."
Comments
by Grant2010
Saturday, September 08 2012, 8:24PM
“Governments (or more correctly excuses for governments) still want and indeed are pressing forward on less and less inspections, regulation and control of work places. This from a government that keeps declaring it will be always be tough on law and order. If industry and governments (past pre-sent and future) don't care about the pain, ill health, suffering, deaths and injuries, this lack of con-trol causes, then why do they moan so about the cost of legal bills, compensation, benefits and levels of disablement that is clearly the result of not enforcing safe and responsible behaviour? Those that mock health safety and welfare, are responsible for most of this cost, quite possibly more than the more readily condemned crooks and thugs. Changing health and safety laws and failing to enforce them is much like cutting murder rates by telling the police the must not investigate so many suspi-cious deaths.”