HSE Updates, Notices, Prosecutions

HSE Updates

Working @ Height

HSE warns firms to better protect employees who work at height

Date: 11 November 2009

Release No: HSE/EM/09

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has delivered a stark warning to companies who fail to protect employees working at height - 'they will be held to account.'

The warning follows a hearing yesterday (November 12) at Nottingham Magistrates' Court when Pontiac Coil Europe Ltd, of Queens Drive Industrial Estate in Nottingham pleaded guilty to/was found guilty of a breach of Regulation 6(3) and 4(1) of the Work at Height Regulations 2005. The company failed to take sufficient measures to prevent employees falling from a height, after a member of staff fell from a mezzanine floor.

Pontiac Coil Europe Ltd was fined £10,000 and ordered to pay £4,867 costs for the incident on 25 June 2008, when employee, Norman Leonard Cole of Carlton, Nottingham fractured his skull and shoulder and sustained a number of fractured ribs when he fell 2.4 metres from a mezzanine floor.

HSE Inspector Stuart Pilkington said:

"Falling from height continues to be one of the most common causes of fatal injury to workers, accounting for 58 fatalities in 2007/08 in Great Britain. On this occasion Mr Cole sustained a fractured skull as well as other injuries, and was lucky to escape death.