Leicestershire construction firm put lives in danger

Date:

14 January 2011

Release No:

HSE/EM/125/11

A construction company endangered the lives of both its workforce and the public while demolishing an old factory in Leicester city centre, a court heard.

Saleh Properties Ltd, of North Evington, Leicester, was demolishing a disused factory in Orson Street on 21 April last year to make way for new homes when an inspector from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) found that the building was at risk of collapse.

Leicester Magistrates' Court heard workers had removed structural parts of the building without properly supporting it. Some workers were even spotted standing on the roof, demolishing parts of the building by hand, and were working at height without suitable equipment to prevent falls.

The HSE inspector immediately stopped work and served prohibition notices preventing any more activity until a demolition plan was in place and a competent supervisor was on site.

Missing safety signs and fencing were ordered to be installed to ensure members of the public were kept away from the unsafe building.

Saleh Properties Ltd, of 109 Coleman Road, North Evington pleaded guilty to breaching Regulations 9 (1)(a) and 28 (2) of the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2007 and two breaches of Regulation 6 (3) of the Work at Height Regulations 2005. The company was fined £4,000 and ordered to pay costs of £1,084.

Inspector Stephen Farthing said:

"Saleh Properties showed a horrendous disregard for health and safety which was not only putting workers at risk, but also passing members of the public going about their daily lives. There was a real danger of this building collapsing.

"The site supervisor had no training in health and safety, no method statements or risk assessments had been carried out before the work started and there were no welfare facilities for workers.

"To run a construction company in this manner is wholly unacceptable and this prosecution shows that HSE will clamp down on small construction companies failing to adhere to basic health and safety regulations."

Working at height remains one of the biggest causes of injury in the workplace. In 2008/9, there were 35 deaths and more than 4,000 major injuries caused by falls from height.

Information on how to prevent falls from height is available at www.hse.gov.uk/falls.

Notes to editors

1. The Health and Safety Executive is Britain's national regulator for workplace health and safety. It aims to reduce work-related death, injury and ill health. It does so through research, information and advice; promoting training; new or revised regulations and codes of practice; and working with local authority partners by inspection, investigation and enforcement. www.hse.gov.uk
2. Regulation 9 (1)(a) of the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2007 states: "Every client shall take reasonable steps to ensure that the arrangements made for managing the project (including the allocation of sufficient time and other resources) by persons with a duty under these Regulations (including the client himself) are suitable to ensure that the construction work can be carried out so far as is reasonably practicable without risk to the health and safety of any person."
3. Regulation 28 (1) of the same Regulations states: "All practicable steps shall be taken, where necessary to prevent danger to any person, to ensure that any new or existing structure or any part of such structure which may become unstable or in a temporary state of weakness or instability due to the carrying out of construction work does not collapse.
4. Regulation 28 (2) of the same Regulations states "Any buttress, temporary support or temporary structure must be of such design and so installed and maintained as to withstand any foreseeable loads which may be imposed on it, and must only be used for the purposes for which it is so designed, installed and maintained."
5. 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."

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