The Health & Safety Executive (HSE) reported recently that a company and its operations manager were both fined a total of nearly £120,000 and £37,500, respectively, after one of its workers fell to his death through a roof at the company’s site in Dudley. The employee and a colleague had been working to remove a redundant steel cleaning machine when the employee stepped onto a fragile roof and fell more than 20 feet to the floor below. Regrettably his injuries were so serious that he was pronounced dead at the scene.
The steel cleaning machine was in a corrugated steel tower and to remove the machine it was necessary to partially dismantle the tower which the employee and his colleague were asked to do. Once at the top of the tower, they used an angle grinder to remove the bolts holding the corrugated steel plates in place. It was during this process, which was carried out near a fragile roof surface, that the employee suffered the fatal fall.
HSE’s investigations found that no suitable and sufficient risk assessments were made for the activity and that it was carried out without suitable access equipment or safe working practices.
What’s more, not only was the activity not properly planned and organised but it was also not correctly supervised or carried out in a safe manner. To make matters worse, the two employees were not trained to work at height either.
How to prevent fatal injuries when working at height
Working at height is one of the biggest causes of major injuries and fatalities in Great Britain. Employers are required to properly plan such work and supervise them whilst they are being carried out and, additionally, only have those employees carry out such works who have been properly trained and have the necessary skills, knowledge and experience to do the task safely. The employer must also provide all of the necessary safety equipment and make sure that it is used properly by their employees, ensuring that all activities involving working at a height are carried out as safely as possible.
Employers are also required to prepare a risk assessment before the activity is carried out so that any parts of the activity which are particularly dangerous are identified and steps are taken to minimise the risks that those parts of the process present to workers carrying out the task.
Supervision of the task will also help in minimising any potential hazards that may become clear during the course of the activity in case the process changes in an unexpected way.
Where employers ask their employees to carry out activities on or near fragile surfaces they should manage the danger by firstly trying to avoid carrying out work on or near such surfaces, and if this cannot be avoided, then the risks that such activities present must be minimised by using staging, guard rails and fall arrest systems etc.
Roof work accounts for a quarter of all deaths in the construction industry and falls through fragile materials make up more of these deaths than any other single cause. Statistics collated by the HSE show that in 2023/2024 alone, there were 74 recorded fatalities because of a fall from a height.
How we can help
The Health and Safety Executive gives fines to negligent employers whose actions have caused harm to employees but is not there to provide the support needed to the injured people and their loved ones to rebuild their lives. That is something we can help with by investigating and bringing a working injury claim against the company or organisation whose duty it was to keep them safe. If you want to have a free, confidential chat with Faqir Nawaz or a specialist personal injury lawyer call us on 0800 044 8488 or fill in our contact form so we can call you back at a time convenient for you.
