A Dorset-based contractor has been fined by a Magistrates Court after it was exposed that he had failed to adequately monitor health and safety on work sites.
Mr Anthony Fry had been contracted to carry out work on a farm in Dorset in 2011. This work included building a single dwelling at the farm and replacing the barn roof. One of the men that he had employed to carry out work on the roof, Mr David Clark, was crawling on a board adjacent to the barn when the roof that the board was balancing on collapsed, sending him plummeting to the ground. Mr Clark suffered serious injuries to his spine and ribs as a result. After the accident he was unable to return to work for almost two months and has subsequently changed careers. It is not known whether Mr Clark has claimed or will claim personal injury against his previous employer for his injuries.
The Health and Safety Executive was notified of the worksite accident after it occurred on 14 December 2011. An investigation was subsequently carried out and this investigation found that Mr Fry had failed to put in place a number of health and safety requirements. For example, whilst the job was being undertaken the mobile elevated work platform developed a problem, making it impossible to access the roof using this machine, and this meant that the workers had to rely on using a couple of crawl boards to crawl from the roof of an adjacent building to the barn to repair the roof. However, the adjacent building had a fragile asbestos cement roof, which gave way when Mr Clark was standing on it, causing his injuries. The Health and Safety Executive therefore recommended that a prosecution of Mr Fry be commenced for his breaches of health and safety regulations.
The matter came before the Weymouth Magistrates’ Court on 3 July 2013. The court heard how the HSE investigation had exposed a number of shortcomings with the work on the farm site, including a lack of edge protection around the roof, the necessity for workers to walk across a fragile roof to reach their workplace, and a lack of staging to spread the load (among other things).
Mr Fry pleaded guilty to a breach of Regulation 4(1)(c) of the Work at Height Regulations 2005. He was therefore found guilty and fined £2,000 for breaching the regulations. He was also ordered to pay the prosecution’s costs of £9,440.
HSE inspector James Powell commented on the case that: “In this case, the work had not been properly planned. Mr Clark and fellow employees were working on a fragile roof and yet Michael Fry had neglected to implement basic safety measures to protect them and minimise the risks of falls.”
Marc Hadrill, solicitor at Redmans employment solicitors, gave the following comments on the case: “Even contractors with limited resources have to comply with the law when it comes to making sure that the health and safety of their workers isn’t compromised by poor working practices.”
Redmans Solicitors are unfair dismissal solicitors based in London.