Roofing Work News Roundup – May, 2018

June 01 2018 0comment

Roofing Work News Roundup – May, 2018

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Here at D-marc we’re in the business of making work at height, namely roofing work, safer with our innovative rooftop safety solutions.  As such, we keep a close eye on the news for stories about roof work and working at height in general so that we can provide our readers with useful and relevant information that will keep them up to date with what’s going on in our industry.  Once a month, we’ll publish a roundup of the news that affects our sector in one easy place 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.

Five young schoolgirls who broke into a derelict building near Gloucester Quays shopping centre had to be rescued after one fell onto a flat roof inside the building.  Emergency services rushed to the rescue, leading two girls to safety and lowering the other three down from the roof using an aerial platform.  With school holidays underway, emergency services issued a warning about entering derelict buildings.

A farming company in Shepton Mallet was fined £16,000 after a worker fell from the wall of a silage pit onto a concrete floor, resulting in life-changing injuries.  The worker fell a distance of 2.7 metres after losing his balance whilst leaning over a wall at shin level.  The company admitted failure to comply with the relevant Work at Height Regulations 2005 (WAHR 2005).

In another case, Aberdeen Sheriff Court head the case of a meat producer admitting to breaches of regulation over working at height.  According to a witness, the company director and a factory worker accessed a 5.1 metre roof by standing on a wooden pallet which was held on the prongs of a forklift truck and raised up for access!  The same two men were also seen working on a roof at a height of nearly 9 metres, collecting rubbish close to the exposed edge in wet weather conditions.  It seems that the unorthodox access solution was regularly used, leading us to believe that a rooftop demarcation barrier system would not go amiss at these premises.

It wasn’t all doom, gloom and elevated madness during the month of May – according to the National Access and Scaffolding Confederation (NASC), scaffolding accidents dropped to an all-time low in the UK.  2017 was the fifth consecutive year in which there were zero scaffolding accident fatalities amongst NASC’s membership and the number of major injuries resulting from accidents dropped by 37% from 27 major injuries in 2016 to just 17 in 2017.

To add to this, the latest survey of accidents at work clearly show that the incidence of RIDDOR reportable accidents  in 2017 was less than 10% of similar accidents in 2001 – a trend that we here at D-mark would love to see continuing.

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