Roofing company fined for unsafe work

Date:

10 March 2011

Release No:

COISE/1003

A Surrey roofing company has been fined after two workers were spotted working on a roof almost 30 feet high without using any safety equipment.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) prosecuted BRC Industrial Roofing Specialists Ltd and its managing director, Lee Berbridge, after an inspector saw the men while driving past the scene.

Crawley Magistrates' Court heard BRC had been contracted to 'oversheet' a roof at Independent Business Park in East Grinstead. Oversheeting is when a metal grid system is fixed to a roof and insulation fibre is rolled out on top of the grid, after which a metal sheet is fixed on top.

On 5 January this year, HSE Inspector Russell Beckett was driving past the site when he saw two BRC employees standing on an asbestos roof.

The men had no means to stop them falling from the eight and a half metre fragile roof and nothing to break their fall if they had tripped over the edge or fell through the roof.

Though they had been issued with lightweight staging boards, they were not using these to walk on as intended, and one man was spotted walking on the metal grid while the other was standing on the asbestos.

The inspector was so alarmed at what he saw that he issued a Prohibition Notice stopping any further work immediately. An Improvement Notice was then issued to ensure a risk assessment and correct procedures were in place before work could commence again.

On every previous visit to the firm the HSE issued Prohibition Notices for similar matters.

The HSE investigation showed that work was not properly planned or appropriately supervised and it was not carried out in a manner that was reasonably safe.

HSE's Inspector Russell Beckett said:

"Working on roofs is a high-risk activity. Nearly a quarter of all roofers are killed in falls from height. Falls through fragile materials, such as rooflights and asbestos cement roofing sheets, account for more of these deaths than anything else.

"Employees who work on fragile roofs without the right equipment risk not knowing if their next step could be their last. It is sheer luck that in this case the two men were not severely injured or killed."

BRC Industrial Roofing Specialists Limited of Kings Yard, Kings Road, Long Ditton Surrey, pleaded guilty to Regulation 4 of the Work at Height Regulations 2005. The firm was fined a total of £2,500 and ordered to pay costs of £1,000.

The company's managing director, Lee Berbridge, of the same address, pleaded guilty to Regulation 4 of the Work at Height Regulations 2005. He was fined a total of £3,500 and ordered to pay costs of £1,653.

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 4 of the Work at Height Regulations 2005 states: "Every employer shall ensure that work at height is properly planned, appropriately supervised and carried out in a manner which is, so far as is reasonably practicable, safe."
3. Section 37(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 states: "Where an offence under any of the relevant statutory provisions committed by a body corporate is proved to have been committed with the consent or connivance of, or to have been attributable to any neglect on the part of, any director, manager, secretary or other similar officer of the body corporate or a person who was purporting to act in any such capacity, he as well as the body corporate shall be guilty of that offence and shall be liable to be proceeded against and punished accordingly.
4. Information on risk assessments can be found at: http://www.hse.gov.uk/risk/casestudies/index.htm

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