A company in Kent has been prosecuted after it exposed workers to a number of unnecessary dangers.
European Active Projects Ltd. was investigated by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) after photographs of the risks facing agency workers at the company’s site in Chatham Docks were sent to the regulator by a member of the public in February last year.
At one end, the photos showed a worker stood on a stacked container nine metres from the ground, but at the other end, they were directly above the sea. Despite the height at which they were working, no safety measures had been put in place to prevent the workers from falling, nor to mitigate the effects of a potential fall from the sides of the containers.
On Tuesday 6th January, Medway Magistrates’ Court heard how, in the days leading up to the incident, the company had been erecting the containers so that a client was able to run an offshore fire evacuation drill.
The investigation by the HSE found that a risk assessment and method of working had actually been provided by the company, which stated that each of the containers would be secured by a worker operating from a mobile boom and dressed in a fall arrest harness.
However, European Active Projects had in fact failed to source a boom and neglected the need for a review of the working method to identify how workers could safely access the containers without it. As such, agency workers had to use ladders that hadn’t been secured in order for them to access the containers, made more perilous by the fact that they were still in motion whilst being landed.
The court heard how, in December 2013, the company had received a written letter from the HSE after they investigated a serious incident concerning a lifting operation. They had advised the company that it had needed to improve how its lifting operations were planned and organised, particularly with regards to the supervision of agency workers.
The company was fined £15,000 together with £917 in costs after it admitted to breaching the Work at Height Regulations and the Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations.
HSE inspector Joanne Williams, speaking after the hearing, said: “The dangers of falling, and quite possibly sustaining fatal injuries, were very real and highlighted quite dramatically in the photos that were taken.
“The company had a plan but then totally ignored it as soon as it became clear a mobile boom couldn’t be sourced in time. It failed to provide any suitable measures to make sure the container structure could be erected safely and allowed dangerous practices to take place on site.
“European Active Projects’ failings were compounded by the lifting accident that had occurred recently and our advice should still have been ringing in their ears!”