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Health and safety fail
31 Aug 2011
After yesterday’s ridicule of H+S, a building firm in Merton has been hauled up in front of the courts after running the most dangerous site in the country for a while.
Here’s their catalogue of health and safety errors, and how they should have done it to make their work at height, safe.
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What they did
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What they should have used
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No safe access to the first floor: they used a bag of sand, blocks and a hut roof!
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A scaffold tower with internal access ladder
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Wooden planks from hut roof to the first floor with no protection rail
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A scaffold tower with protection rail
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An unguarded, unsupported 2.5m excavation trench
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Protection rail and support joists
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Uneven work surface with tools and obstacles creating trip hazards
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Tool vaults and boardwalks or youngman boards
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They also had a filthy toilet and a leaking cold water supply.
HSE visited the site several times, but standards did not improve even after three prohibition notices, so the Wimbledon-based Kubik Homes and Bromley-based Bellway Developments were fined £8k each and ordered to pay costs of £2,426.50 and £2,384 respectively.