Essex truck firm in court over life-changing injuries

Date:

3 October 2012

Release No:

HSE-e-98

An Essex firm has been prosecuted after one of its employees suffered life-changing injuries when he fell from a stepladder while spray-painting a lorry.

The lorry the worker was painting when the incident occurred

The 51-year-old man from Latchingdon, who has asked not to be named, shattered his left shoulder and collar bone, broke several ribs and received a deep cut to his head in the fall at Chelmer Truck Bodies Ltd in Boreham near Chelmsford.

The company was prosecuted by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) after an investigation found that the same employee had fallen off a stepladder just one month before the incident, but no action had been taken to improve safety at the site on Boreham Industrial Estate.

Chelmsford Magistrates' Court head today (3 October) that the worker had been painting the lorry on 27 January 2012 when one of the feet on the stepladder slipped down a grill in the concrete floor.

He fell approximately two metres and suffered serious injuries. He is still unable to return to work nearly six months on from the incident, and suffers considerable pain due to the injury to his shoulder.

The court was told the company should have provided employees with a safe working platform rather than stepladders to carry out the work, as they were working at height for several hours at a time.

Chelmer Truck Bodies Ltd was found guilty of a breach of the Work at Height Regulations 2005 by failing to make sure that work at height was carried out safely.

The company, which went into voluntary liquidation in April 2012, was fined £7,500 and ordered to pay costs of £4,923 as well as a £15 victim surcharge.

Speaking after the hearing, HSE Inspector Kim Tichias said:

"One of Chelmer Truck Bodies' employees has suffered life-changing injuries because the company failed to do anything to improve safety when he fell off a stepladder a month earlier.

"The dangers of carrying out work at height are well known and the company should have provided secure working platforms rather than giving employees lightweight stepladders.

"If the firm had planned the work properly and made changes following the previous incident, then the worker's injuries could have been avoided."

The latest figures show that 38 people died as a result of a workplace fall in Great Britain in 2010/11, and more than 4,000 suffered a major injury. Information on preventing falls 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 4(1) 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."

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