Coronavirus has dominated the headlines and amongst all this some commentators have speculated that employers may be about to face prosecution if they don’t take all Covid-19 precautions possible to protect staff and third parties from infection. Now it is correct to say that employers in the UK owe duties under the Health and Safety at...
Coronavirus came upon the world as an unknown and everyone is now trying to ‘fight’ their way through what is COVID-19 and a severe pandemic. Unlike Corona beer which is rather enjoyable especially on a warm sunny day, the coronavirus is anything but a chilled afternoon sitting in the sun supping on your favourite beverage. It...
Where there’s blame there’s a claim, right? Sigh. In my day, if you fell down you got back up – you didn’t try to sue the tree whose stick you just tripped over. Times change – and there’s also this thing called common sense. If you have a company that uses dangerous machines, you...
A company has been fined £2.6 million after an employee was killed when the trench he was working in collapsed in on him. On the 14 April 2010, Mr Sim, a sub-contractor working on behalf of Balfour Beatty Utility Solutions Limited, was laying ducting for new cable for an offshore windfarm that was being built...
I know we constantly bang on about health & safety at work but it is so essential for Company Directors to take personal responsibility to train and protect the safety of their workers…..as the consequences are devastating. Company Director Kenneth Thelwall, from Enfield, has been jailed for 12 months following the death of one...
On 23 September 2014 Construction firm Kier Construction Ltd was fined £4,000 for safety failings after a barrier was blown on top of a pram injuring an 18-week-old baby. The Company plead guilty to breaching Section 3 of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. Stirling Sheriff Court heard that on 24...
The co- directors of a former London scaffolding firm have been prosecuted after a trainee worker fell to his death from a poorly constructed scaffold in Westminster. Sonny Holland, 20, from Orpington, sustained multiple head injuries in the six-metre fall at Whitehall Place on 24 April 2008. He died in hospital the following day....
The building and joining firm, Peter Mawson Ltd, and its owner were sentenced on 3 February 2015 at Preston Crown Court, following an incident in 2011 where a man died after falling through a fragile roof. The emergency services attended West Cumberland Farmers LTD, Lindal, Ulverston, following a report that a man had fallen...
With just under 50 days until the CDM Regulations 2015 potentially come into force and the CDM Regulations 2007 revoked, do you know what needs to happen between then and now? If a project is underway and will still be ongoing on 6 April 2015 it can carry on as is IF it will...
The Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 (CDM 2015) make the role of CDM co-ordinator obsolete and introduce the principal designer (PD). The associated, draft guidance (L153) offers no scenarios describing who might be PD under different procurement models nor the skills, knowledge, experience and organisational capability that they require. We therefore don’t know...