Work at Height
Posted: Thursday 13 May 2010
It isn’t always easy to spot trends or patterns coming out of the HSE press releases for enforcement activity. However, following the Shattered Lives campaign to target slips, trips and falls from height a very clear trend has been emerging over recent months. Set against the background of statistics demonstrating that in 2008/09 over 4,000 employees suffered a major injury and 21 employees lost their lives as a result of falls from height it is not difficult to see why.
The following table outlines some of the more recent prosecutions and it very quickly becomes apparent that inadequately planned and controlled work at height is being targeted with some vigour by HSE.
|
Date |
Fine |
Detail |
Breach |
|
May 2010 |
£170,000 plus costs Director disqualification for 4 years |
Worker fell 9m from racking - paralysed from chest down |
Work not planned, no safe system and no fall protection |
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April 2010 |
£200,000 plus costs |
Employee fell 5m, fatal accident |
System drafted but not followed, fall arrest equipment not issued to staff and no training provided in use, staff not aware of procedure |
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April 2010 |
£15,000 |
Employee fell 3m from roof and broke leg |
No safety measures such as guard rails. Work not planned and controlled |
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April 2010 |
£100,000 |
Worker fell 30 feet to death, working on roof and fell through area cut out as part of the work |
Inadequate planning, could have organised work so no need to go on roof |
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April 2010 |
£17,500 |
Worker fell through unmarked fragile roof light. Fractured vertebrae. |
Inadequate planning. Failed to identify risk of fragile areas on roof. |
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April 2010 |
£10,000 |
Worker fell through roof onto machine below. Extensive bruising. |
No risk assessment carried out and no fall prevention. |
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April 2010 |
£22,500 |
Fell 4m from roof. |
No edge protection, nets or work platform provided |
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March 2010 |
£10,000 |
Work carried out on roof, fell through unguarded sky light suffering serious injury |
Inadequate planning. Failure to put edge protection around areas such as sky lights |
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March 2010 |
£10,000 |
No injury but employer was allowing workers to carry out work on roof of 8m building without edge protection |
Inadequate planning |
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February 2010 |
£1,750 |
Employee fell 4 feet suffering fractured rib. Working from girder used as access for cleaning |
Work not planned. Could have identified a means of safe access to the elevated work area. |
In addition to taking a robust stance on prosecution for breaches of the Work at Height Regulations, and by way of illustration, the HSE have also published statistics to confirm that over the course of 2009 in the Manchester area they issued 148 enforcement notices in respect of unsafe work practices for work carried out at height. This is a significant increase and this is mirrored across the UK.
What is apparent from the statistics and the emerging enforcement pattern is that failure to plan for and control work at height can be costly in human, financial and reputational terms.
The legal provisions governing this type of work are contained within the Work at Height Regulations 2005 and they define work at height as including work carried out in any place, including (a) a place at or below ground level and (b) obtaining access to or egress from such a place at work other than by a staircase in a permanent workplace where, if measures required by the regulations were not taken, a person could fall a distance liable to cause personal injury. Accordingly the regulations have no minimum height requirement and they apply to all work activities where there is a need to control a risk of falling a distance that could cause personal injury. The regulations could therefore apply to any of the following:-
- work on a scaffold or mobile elevated work platform (MEWP);
- working on the back of a lorry or road tanker;
- work on top of a container in docks, on a ship or a storage area;
- tree surgery or other forestry work at height,
- working near an excavation or cellar opening,
- painting or similar decoration work carried out at height;
- working on staging or trestles, for example during entertainment or sporting events;
- using a ladder or step ladder for shelf filling, window cleaning or similar.
At the heart of the regulations is the principle that the employer should apply a three stage hierarchy to the planning of all work which is to be carried out at height.
The first step is to avoid carrying out work at height insofar as possible. This may include carrying out as much of the work as possible at ground level before completing a task at height if complete avoidance is not possible.
The second stage, if work at height cannot be avoided, is to take suitable and sufficient measures to prevent so far as is reasonably practicable any person falling a distance liable to cause a personal injury. This could be by means of guard rails or other edge protection for certain types of work.
The third step, where the employer cannot eliminate the risk of falling, is to take suitable and sufficient measures to minimise the distance and consequences of a fall.
In some cases control of the risks from work at height may be relatively simple. For example, a filing clerk who has to collect and return files to a high shelf from a kick stool may need little more than training and instruction about not overloading and not overstretching.
However there will be more complicated work types such as construction work on a roof which is at the other extreme. It is beyond the scope of this article to give comprehensive advice on planning for work at height in every potential scenario but to illustrate the complexity of the risk assessment for roof work it is likely that the assessment would consider hazards such as fragile roof materials (particularly those materials that may have deteriorated with age), exposed edges, the fact that the roof may be pitched, that there would have to be suitable means of safe access to and egress from the roof, that barriers may be needed, that fragile areas of the roof such as roof lights would have to be identified and precautions put in place, that suitable warning signs indicating fragile roofs may need to be displayed at ground level and of course that the work should not overlook other hazards such as overhead services, potential presence of asbestos, the use of potentially hazardous equipment such as Bituman boilers and manual handling. This is of course not an exhaustive list but demonstrates the broad range of considerations that have to be taken into account to ensure that work at height is properly planned.
Employers should not lose sight of the fact that for certain types of work at height they should also be taking precautions to prevent the dangers associated with falling objects. The risk assessment in that case is likely to extend beyond considering the risks to their employees to include members of the public who may be in the vicinity of the work.
The HSE are continuing the Shattered Lives campaign into 2010 and it is clear that work at height will continue to be a priority area for inspection and enforcement for the foreseeable future. The pattern of prosecutions clearly demonstrates that the HSE will take enforcement action whether or not there has been an accident and they will take action against a broad range of duty holders such as sole traders, companies and company directors. The most recent prosecution reported and noted above included a prosecution of one of the company directors with the consequence for him that he now has a criminal record, he was fined a substantial sum and has been disqualified from acting as a director for 4 years.
With all of this in mind there has never been a better time to review whether or not your employees are carrying out work at height and if that cannot be avoided to review your systems of work to ensure that the risks are adequately controlled.
