£41k fine for builders who 'could have killed' pedestrians with falling concrete block

Wednesday 28 June 2017

A local building firm has been fined over £40,000 in the Royal Court after failing to prevent a large concrete block from falling several metres from scaffolding and onto the pavement where it could have seriously injured or killed passing pedestrians.

The incident was just one of five serious breaches of the Health and Safety at Work Law by Columbia Design and Build Ltd between February and November 2015, which provoked a Royal Court hearing in May.

Bailiff Sir William Bailhache, who sat with Jurats Nicolle and Ramsden, heard that the company had put “both the public and workers at risk” whilst working on the site spanning Queens House, St James House and New St James Place. 

On one occasion, workmen were observed throwing debris out of a first-floor window into a parked lorry, without any measures in place to prevent the public from being struck. The Court also heard that nothing had been done to protect pedestrians from craneworks.

Workmen were observed frequently operating on unprotected roof edges, facing drops of between nine to 18 feet if they were to put a foot out of place.

Health and safety officials had flagged up the illegal practices several times, but these were continually breached. On one day, a prohibition notice was served at noon, but a workman was spotted just two hours later walking over a parapet wall on the building’s first floor, carrying paving slabs along the border of an unprotected roof edge.

Pictured: The Royal Court, where Columbia Design and Build Ltd's case was heard.

The most serious of the offences, however, was the falling concrete block, which the judging panel concluded, “…would have caused very serious injury if not, potentially, death had there been a person underneath.” The fact that both employees and the public had come away unharmed was simply, “…a matter of chance,” they said.

Despite the bad practices, the Court was told that a health and safety firm had issued reports with strict instructions but that these were either not received by the site manager or foreman or, worse, they had simply been disregarded.

Nonetheless, the Court concluded that obligation lay with the employer, which, “…did not concern itself sufficiently with ensuring that health and safety at work rules were complied with.” 

“The purpose is to ensure that employees have a safe system of work and it is quite clear it is just not good enough for an employer to delegate responsibility for ensuring that the regulations are complied with down to the employees whether it is the most junior of the employees or whether it is the site foreman or site manager.  The obligation lies on the employer to ensure that there is a safe system of work,” the Bailiff wrote in his judgment.

Acknowledgement was given, however, for the firm having taken, “…prompt steps to put right what it should never have allowed to go wrong in the first place.”

Columbia Design and Build was subsequently ordered to pay a fine of £41,000 and cover prosecution costs in the sum of £5,000.