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34 Spring 2023 HEALTH & SAFETY £20,000 PENALTY FORHEALTHAND SAFETY FAILINGS AT BUILDING SITE A company has been fined £20,000 for a catalogue of health and safety failings at a building site in Alderley Edge. Work was taking place to convert an old bank into offices on London Road in the Cheshire village. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) inspected the site in October 2020. HSE found many health and safety failings, including several areas where workers could have fallen from height, a risk of exposure to hazardous substances, and inadequate welfare facilities. The company doing the work, Daniel Taylor Builder and Architectural Woodworker Limited, was served with three prohibition notices prohibiting unsafe activities and five improvement notices requiring the company to take remedial action to comply with the law. A HSE investigation then found the firm had previously been the subject of enforcement action relating to unsafe work at height at both its construction sites and joinery workshop. The investigation also found company director, David Taylor, was acting as site manager at the London Road site and had failed to ensure the necessary health and safety measures were implemented to protect employees and others, despite the previous HSE interventions. Daniel Taylor Builder and Architectural Woodworker Limited, of Wheelwrights Yard, Congleton, Cheshire, pleaded guilty to breaching section 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974. The company was fined £20,000 following its early guilty plea, and ordered to pay £1,507.71 in costs at South Cheshire Magistrates’ Court. David William Taylor, of New Road, Congleton, Cheshire, pleaded guilty to breaching section 37(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974. Mr Taylor, 77, was fined £10 by the district judge taking into account totality of sentencing this defendant as a director of the company, his early guilty plea, positive references and his cooperation with HSE enforcement action. He was ordered to pay £1,507.71 in costs at South Cheshire Magistrates’ Court on 8 February 2023. HEALTH BOARD’S £160,000 FINE AS EMPLOYEES DIAGNOSEDWITH HAND ARMVIBRATION SYNDROME A Welsh health board has been fined after three employees were diagnosed with Hand Arm Vibration Syndrome (HAVS). Powys Teaching Health Board required its employees to routinely operate handheld power tools such as lawn mowers, strimmers and hedge cutters without carrying out an assessment of the risks from exposure to vibration. There was no monitoring, or any estimate of exposure to vibration, even though employees, particularly during the summer months, operated handheld power tools for several hours a day. An investigation by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) found the health board had failed to properly assess the levels of exposure to its employees and that information, instruction and training given to staff was limited. It also found that the health board had ignored requests from its own occupational health department to conduct a risk assessment. The lack of monitoring, assessment, training and health surveillance has allowed employees to operate handheld power tools for a significant period, in some cases several decades, without having the necessary measures in place to reduce the risk. This led to three employees being diagnosed with Hand Arm Vibration Syndrome. Powys Teaching Health Board of Glasbury House, Bronllys Hospital, Bronllys, Powys, Wales, pleaded guilty to breaching Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974. It was fined £160,000 and ordered to pay costs of £5,599 at Wrexham Magistrates’ Court.