Roofing Work News Roundup – February, 2019
Here at D-marc we’re in the business of making work at height, and roofing work in particular, safer with our innovative rooftop barrier solutions which are designed to enhance the level of safety on roof tops. We watch the news, looking out 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.
Our first news item concerns a subcontractor who has been fined £2,000 plus costs for breaching Regulation 6 of the Work at Height Regulations 2005. A Health and Safety Executive (HSE) investigation revealed that the work was not properly planned and that no measures were in place to protect against falls from height. A 22-year-old worker fell through the roof of a sheep shed he was working on and onto a concrete floor more than 4 metres below. The worker suffered three fractured vertebrae, a displaced ribcage and a fractured heel as a result of the fall.
Primary school children in South Wales had a lucky escape when scaffolding erected at the gable end of a neighbouring residential property collapsed. The scaffold (which was 7 metres high and 8 metres long) collapsed onto a single storey roof above the school playground. Some nursery children were in the playground at the time, but luckily at a safe distance. Just a few minutes before the collapse, the playground had been full of pupils playing after their lunch break.
In a case that shocked Manchester Crown Court, a contractor forged health and safety documents with the signature of a dead man after the roof worker suffered a fatal fall from height! Mark Bray was found guilty of gross negligence manslaughter following the death of the 54-year older roofer and had already pleaded guilty to perverting the course of justice for forging health and safety documents. The prosecution alleged that Bray failed to give employees a sufficient health and safety briefing and his phone records proved that he was in a different location when he claimed to give the workers a risk assessment meeting. Bray’s employer also faces charges of corporate manslaughter, with its manging director facing a charge of being an official of a body which committed an offence under the health and safety act. Two other companies also face separate charges under the Health and Safety Act.