Scaffold collapse leads to fine for Nottinghamshire director

Date:

14 November 2011

Release No:

HSE/266/11

The director of a scaffolding company from Kirkby-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, has been fined after a roofing contractor was injured during a scaffold collapse.

The 48-year-old, from Nottingham, fell six metres and fractured his pelvis in four places after scaffolding built on behalf of David Knowles collapsed at a house in Montpelier Road, Nottingham, on 20 October 2009. He was off work for four months.

A Health and Safety Executive (HSE) investigation found the scaffolding had not been built by a competent scaffolder, was not erected to a standard configuration and had not been tied correctly.

Mr Knowles was prosecuted for failing to ensure that people not in his employment were not exposed to risks to their health and safety.

After the hearing HSE inspector Mark Molyneux said:

"Construction workers' lives depend on scaffolds. Scaffold businesses must ensure their workers are trained and competent and that scaffolds meet the requirements and are tied correctly.

"If Mr Knowles had ensured the scaffolding had been properly planned and erected and tied by a competent person, this incident would never have happened and a man would not have suffered a painful injury as a result."

David Knowles, 54, of Station Street, Kirkby-in-Ashfield, pleaded guilty to breaching Section 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 at Nottingham Magistrates' Court today. He was fined £5,000 and ordered to pay £3,944 costs.

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 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 states: "It shall be the duty of every employer to conduct his undertaking in such a way as to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that persons not in his employment who may be affected thereby are not thereby exposed to risks to their health or safety."
3. Visit www.hse.gov.uk/falls for more guidance on working at height.

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