Internal fall exposes housebuilder failures

Firm fined after two bricklayers fall into first floor from external scaffold 

Cairns Heritage Homes No2 Limited has been prosecuted after two bricklayers fell more than 2m from a scaffold on a homes development in Normanton, near Bottesford in December 2011.

The two men were installing a wall plate and finishing off brickwork near the top of a house. One man opened the scaffold loading bay gate for a telehandler lifting mortar when he and his fellow worker ”felt the scaffold shake” and both fell into the first floor of the house suffering serious injury.

Risk of internal fall from scaffold left unprotected

Leicester Magistrates heard (7 September) that HSE investigators found the company had a policy of using fall protection nets when installing roof trusses but the internal fall risk was left unprotected until that stage.

Cairns Heritage Homes No2 Limited, of Old Parsonage Lane, Horton, Loughborough, pleaded guilty to breaching Regulation 4(1)(c) of the Work at Height Regulations 2005. Magistrates fined the company £6,500 and ordered it to pay costs of £1,836

After the hearing, HSE inspector Tony Mitchell said:

“This incident could have been prevented by thinking through the need for fall protection for the whole job, not just part of it. This was a high-risk activity and builders should not become complacent about ensuring that adequate safety measures are in place for the full duration of the work.

Unfortunately, this lack of forethought resulted in two men receiving debilitating