The worker suffered a shattered elbow, broken vertebrae, fractured pelvis and ribs, and damage to internal organs in the incident. He fell almost ten metres from a platform when it gave way, landing on a concrete staircase below.
The principal contractor for construction work at the site, was fined after an investigation by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) identified a number of failings.
Southwark Crown Court heard that on the day of the fall the worker was helping two colleagues, including a foreman, to raise a temporary work platform inside a concrete shaft to house a stairwell within a building under construction.
The platform was lifted from one floor to another by a crane using four lifting chains before being locked in place in the shaft to enable the next level to be constructed. It had been raised from the fourth to the fifth floor level when the crane operator was inadvertently instructed by the foreman to take the chains away while one of them was still attached. The platform was lifted by only one corner and disintegrated.
Of the three workers standing on the temporary structure at the time, two managed to jump to safety but the other worker was unable to do so. He fell into the shaft beneath with parts of the platform and equipment that had been stored on top raining down on him.
After sentencing HSE Inspector Loraine Charles said:
“It is vitally important that principal contractors appreciate that managing and monitoring subcontractors involves more than merely requiring them to provide risk assessments and method statements, and then carrying out basic hazard spotting inspections. They need to make sure that there is a proper assessment of the content of the documentation provided to ensure that they make sense and properly address the risks associated with the work being undertaken.
“In this case, St George South London concerned themselves more with the existence than the content of the subcontractor safety documents, and although they themselves carried out regular site safety inspections, all of these were superficial and failed to indentify significant systemic failures.”
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