Roofing Work News Roundup – June, 2019
Here at D-marc our top priority is to help make work at height, and roofing work in particular, safer. As such we offer our clients a wide range of innovative rooftop safety solutions. Our team members keep a close eye on the news for stories about roof work and working at height in general so that we can make sure our readers know about what’s going on in our industry. Once a month, we publish a roundup of the news that affects the roofing sector so that readers can get a quick overview of the most important happenings over the past month. If you have anything to add or know of any stories that you’d like us to cover, please don’t hesitate to let us know, either by email, on our Facebook Page or on our Twitter feed.
Our first item concerns a roofing contractor who has been sentenced to a year in prison, suspended for 12 months, and 200 hours of community service. Llandudno Magistrates’ Court also required that the contractor pay £4,000 towards the costs involved. This ruling came when the contractor pleaded guilty to failing to provide precautions to prevent falls from height. To add insult to injury, the contractor was issued with a prohibition notice when his employees were seen working on the roof of a two-storey house without edge protection, but failed to comply with this, choosing instead to ignore the notice and carry on working.
Meanwhile, a scaffolding company and roofing contractor were fined more than £40,000 after a worker died as a result of a fall through a fragile roof during construction work at a factory. A Health and Safety Executive (HSE) investigation revealed that the roofing contractor failed to ensure the health and safety of his employees and failed to ensure that people not in his employment were not exposed to risks arising from the work being carried out.
At Southampton Crown Court, an Isle of Wight ferry operator was ordered to pay £40,000 after a worker suffered serious multiple fractures as a result of falling off a mezzanine deck. The HSE investigation discovered that no measures were taken to eliminate the risk of a fall from height and ruled that the ferry company failed to discharge its duty under the Health and Safety at Work Act. Simple steps to eliminate the risk of falling were not taken, such as lowering the mezzanine deck or raising the edge protection barriers.
A personal injury solicitor has questioned whether the Work at Height Regulations and HSE investigations are sufficient to reduce the number of falls from height here in the UK. Following a case in which he obtained compensation for a client who had fallen through a skylight whilst working on a roof, Simon Helliwell expressed surprise at the number of companies being fined when workers and/or objects fall from height. This should serve to make all of us who work at height ensure that we follow health and safety guidelines and minimise the risks involved with working on roofs.