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Winter 2022 33 www.hae.org.uk www.eha.org.uk A carpentry and joinery company has been fined after a man working unsecured on the forks of a fork-lift truck fell 3.5 metres to the ground. In June last year, the man was working for Staircraft Group Limited at its head office site at Bayton Road Industrial Estate, Exhall, Coventry. The employee was working from an unsecured stillage on the forks of a fork-lift truck in order to clean office windows at height. The stillage tipped and the employee fell 3.5 metres to the ground. He sustained a broken leg and an injury to his elbow. An investigation by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) found the company failed to identify that using a stillage to lift someone on the forks of a forklift truck, a method that it had used before, was unsafe. There was a lack of training for employees on the dangers of working at height without the proper equipment and there were no systems of work or risk assessments in place. At Redditch Magistrates’ Court Staircraft Group Limited, of Bayton Road Industrial Estate, Exhall, Coventry pleaded guilty to breaching Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1974. It was fined £200,000 and ordered to pay costs of £6,477.93. COMPANY FINED AFTER WORKER FALLS FROM FORK LIFT WHILE CLEANING WINDOWS A civil engineering firm has been fined £600K for safety breaches after a seven-year-old child became trapped and suffocated on a construction site. Seven-year-old Conley Thompson went missing from home on the morning of 26 July 2015 and was found the next morning by workers at the construction site at Bank End Road, Worsborough, in South Yorkshire. An investigation by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) found that Conley had become trapped in a drainage pipe, which had been fixed into the ground in preparation for the installation of fencing posts. Tragically, he had suffocated before being found the next morning when work restarted on site. Howard Civil Engineering Ltd of Howard House Limewood Approach Leeds pleaded guilty to breaching regulation 13(4)(b) of the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 and to breaching Section 3 (1) of the Health & Safety at Work etc Act 1974. The company was fined £600K and ordered to pay £42,952.88 in costs at Sheffield Crown Court. The construction site was a new-build housing development next to an existing housing estate and adjacent to busy pedestrian footpaths and roads. HSE found that there was insufficient fencing in place to prevent unauthorised persons from accessing the construction site owing to a combination of poor planning, management and monitoring of the site and its perimeter. >> £600K FINE FOR FIRM AFTER DEATH OF SEVEN YEAR OLD