HSE warns firms to better protect employees who work at height

Date:

11 November 2009

Release No:

HSE/EM/09

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has delivered a stark warning to companies who fail to protect employees working at height - they will be held to account.

The warning follows a hearing yesterday (November 12) at Nottingham Magistrates' Court when Pontiac Coil Europe Ltd, of Queens Drive Industrial Estate in Nottingham pleaded guilty to/was found guilty of a breach of Regulation 6(3) and 4(1) of the Work at Height Regulations 2005. The company failed to take sufficient measures to prevent employees falling from a height, after a member of staff fell from a mezzanine floor.

Pontiac Coil Europe Ltd was fined £10,000 and ordered to pay £4,867 costs for the incident on 25 June 2008, when employee, Norman Leonard Cole of Carlton, Nottingham fractured his skull and shoulder and sustained a number of fractured ribs when he fell 2.4 metres from a mezzanine floor. Mr Cole, who was 62 at the time, was dismantling the mezzanine floor surface at the company's premises on Longwall Avenue, Queens Drive Industrial estate in Nottingham.

The company failed to ensure that the work was properly planned, or to take suitable and sufficient measures to prevent Mr Cole falling.

HSE Inspector Stuart Pilkington said:

"Falling from height continues to be one of the most common causes of fatal injury to workers, accounting for 58 fatalities in 2007/08 in Great Britain. On this occasion Mr Cole sustained a fractured skull as well as other injuries, and was lucky to escape death.

"More than half (59%) of deaths reported in the construction industry in 2007/08 were as a result of working at height. These incidents are easily preventable and guidance on working at height is available on the HSE website."

Notes to editors

1. Regulation 4(1) of the Work at Height Regulations 2005 states: "Every employer shall ensured that work at height is properly planned, appropriately supervised and carried out in a manner which is so far as is reasonably practicable safe."
2. Regulation 6(3) of the Work at Height Regulations 2005 states: "Where work is carried out at height, every employer shall take suitable and sufficient measures to prevent, so far as is reasonably practicable, any person falling a distance liable to cause personal injury."
3. Information and guidance on working at height can be found on the HSE website at: http://www.hse.gov.uk/falls/index.htm

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