HSE: Wimbledon building firm risked workers’ lives

Posted on Friday 1 January 2010

A construction company in South West London has been prosecuted for exposing its workforce to serious dangers on a building site in Holland Park.

Several serious risks were identified during a visit by Health and Safety Executive (HSE) inspectors in November 2013 as part of a nationwide campaign by HSE focusing on basement construction works.

Westminster Magistrates were told on 19 November that HSE had found a catalogue of safety failings at the Stach site that related to the risks of workers falling from heights of between two and five metres, including:

Workers having to climb over edge protection – which is supposed to prevent falls – to get onto a ladder to reach basement excavations
Workers having to again climb over edge protection, this time to operate the controls for spoil conveyors, which took them to an area without barriers or even a safe surface to stand
Unnecessary work being carried out over a skip, two metres above passers-by and street traffic, with no means to prevent falls
The removal of edge protection for space to move materials around, leaving an open edge and exposing workers to a potential fall of five metres.

HSE served prohibition notices on three of the specific danger areas, halting any further work until Stach took measures to resolve the safety issues. HSE told the court that similar prohibition notices had been served on the company for work at the same site only two months before the November inspection, yet Stach had obviously not taken sufficient and consistent action to raise its safety standards.

Stach of Granville Road, London SW19, was fined £12,500 and ordered to pay £1,698 in costs after pleading guilty to a breach of the Work at Height Regulations 2005.

After the hearing, HSE inspector Stephron Baker Holmes said: “Although there was no injury that prompted the prosecution, that is more a matter of good fortune rather than good management by Stach of their building site. The failings identified were numerous and serious, but could have been remedied quite simply. The cost would be modest, but the benefits in terms of potential for saving life and limb are significant.

“The earlier enforcement action ought to have served as a warning to the company that it needed to improve its management of work at height. Instead, workers were again exposed to unacceptable levels of risk.”