Worker suffers broken back in roof plunge

Date:

12 April 2011

Release No:

YH/55/11

A Halifax man's life was shattered after he plunged from the roof of a two-storey house because the firm he worked for paid scant attention to safe systems of working at height, a court was told today.

The worker, now 33, who does not wish to be identified, broke his back in the seven-metre fall from the roof of a house in Cookridge, Leeds, on 19 February 2010. He was in hospital 15 days and suffered serious back injuries that will affect him the rest of his working life.

His employers at the time, Fluetech Ltd, pleaded guilty today at Leeds Magistrates' Court to three health and safety offences in a prosecution brought by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). The company, of Drakes Industrial Estate, Shay Lane, Halifax, was fined a total of £13,500 and ordered to pay costs of £3,873.

The house with the dormer extension to the rear

The court heard that the worker was on the roof and just about to install a flue liner down the inside of the chimney. He had put up a roof ladder and stepped onto it when it gave way, sending him falling all the way to the ground below. He did not know there was a dormer extension on the other side of the roof so the roof ladder had failed to hook over the ridge properly.

The HSE investigation showed the company failed to assess the risks properly before the work started, failed to find out there was a dormer window on the rear of the roof, failed to make sure workers were provided with the correct equipment for the job and to take suitable measures to ensure workers were not exposed to risks to their safety.

Inspector David Welsh said:

"This worker has suffered horrendous and life-changing injuries as a result of the company's numerous failures. What makes matters worse is that, after the man was taken to hospital severely injured, the company allowed its employees to finish that job and subsequently similar jobs, all using the same unsafe systems of work.

"The company relied far too much on using portable ladders alone. At this job, they should have used scaffolding or a tower scaffold to prevent the roof ladder falling all the way to the ground.

"The company was very poor at assessing and managing the risks of working at heights. Anyone who works in the construction industry knows that falls are the commonest cause of death and serious injury in the workplace."

Last year, more than 4,000 workers suffered major injuries as the result of falls from height and 12 lost their lives. Information on preventing injuries 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.
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. Regulation 7(2)(a)(b) of the Work at Height Regulations 2005 states: 'An employer shall select work equipment for work at height which- (a) has characteristics including dimensions which- (i) are appropriate to the nature of the work to be performed and the foreseeable loadings; and (ii) allow passage without risk; and (b) is in other respects the most suitable work equipment, having regard in particular to the purposes specified in regulation 6.
4. Regulation 3(1) of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 states: 'Every employer shall make a suitable and sufficient assessment of- (a) the risks to the health and safety of his employees to which they are exposed whilst they are at work; and (b) the risks to the health and safety of persons not in his employment arising out of or in connection with the conduct by him of his undertaking, for the purposes of identifying the measures he needs to take to comply with the requirements and prohibitions imposed upon him by or under the relevant statutory provisions...'

Press enquiries

Regional reporters should call the appropriate Regional News Network press office.

Issued on behalf of the Health & Safety Executive by COI News & PR Yorkshire and the Humber