A Midlands firm which specialises in the installation of solar panels has been fined after one of its employees sustained life-threatening injuries when he fell through a skylight at a warehouse in North London.
Brian Dolan, from Warwick, was working for Rugby-based firm Grenergy Solar Ltd in March 2012 when he fell nearly five metres to the concrete floor below and suffered a fractured skull in two places, five broken vertebrae, three broken ribs and a hearing impairment.
Mr Dolan was on his second day of work at the site and was helping to install solar panels on the roof of two warehouse buildings when he fell through the fragile skylight, plunging almost five metres to the concrete floor. A pallet of flour partly broke his fall, but it wasn’t enough to prevent serious injury. Mr Dolan was hospitalised for more than a fortnight and left unable to work for seven months.
Precisely how he fell is unclear, but an investigation by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) said that regardless of how the incident occurred, Grenergy Solar Ltd had put no measures in place to prevent a fall, such as safety netting underneath the skylights. If these measures had been carried out then the incident could well have been avoided.
The company was fined a total of £12,000 and ordered to pay £9,041 in costs after pleading guilty to breaching the Health and Safety at Work Act.