Health & Safety

You Can Run, But You Can't Hide

In 2003, a 28 year old employee died when they fell through a fragile roof light whilst carrying out work on an extension to a warehouse. A number of parties were prosecuted following the incident which the HSE said could have been avoided if some simple precautions had been taken.

The HSE's successful prosecutions resulted in fines of £68,000 plus costs of £40,000. The cases involved the following:

• The Employer - Prosecuted under the Health and Safety at Work Act (HaSaWA), for failing to take care of their employee (£35,000)
• The Contractors - Found to be in breach of sec3 of HaSaWA for failing to take care of people not employed by them (£25,000)
• The Client - The firm whose warehouse was being extended were found to have breached the CDM Regulations (£3,000)
• A Partner of the Project Designers - An individual who was found guilty of failing to discharge their responsibilities as a designers (£2,500)
• The Planning Supervisor, a partner of the firm who acted as Project Designers - The Planning Supervisor was found to be in breach of the CDM Regulations, in particular their duties relating to the drawing up of a Health and Safety Plan (£2,500)

May 2007