HSE fines two councils for "unsafe practices"

Newport City and Bradford councils have been fined for unsafe practice after prosecutions by the Health and Safety Executive.

Newport City Council was fined £20,000 and was ordered to pay £11,000 in costs. after building work at a house exposed a woman and her foster children to the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning. A home improvement company was carrying out a loft conversion at Bettws for the council and had to move a boiler and replace a flue. This was left in an 'immediately dangerous' condition with the potentially lethal fumes escaping into the loft space.

Cwmbran Magistrates heard the householder complained the boiler was not working properly and was leaking, and arranged for an independent engineer to examine the work, who found the pressure relief valve had not been connected and confirmed the boiler was leaking. Gas Safe was called and found the boiler was not correctly fitted and the flue from the gas fire had been capped just below the level of the loft, allowing poisonous carbon monoxide gas into the loft space.

The council pleaded guilty to a breach of Section 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974.

HSE Inspector Dean Baker said: “Newport City Council failed in their obligation to the family to ensure that the contractors were able to do [the work] competently.”

Bradford City Council has been fined £12,000 and ordered to pay £9,623 in costs after admitting breaching Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 by failing to ensure the safety of one of its employees while working at height.

A council worker narrowly escaped death, Bradford Magistrates heard, when he plunged 11m from the cradle of a cherry picker.

He had been working at a height of some 35 feet pruning dead branches when the cherry picker overturned, sending him crashing to the ground leading to multiple injuries that left him off work for five months and now unable to work at heights.

The cherry picker was correctly set up on a compacted path but as the boom arm and cradle were rotated anti-clockwise to move from tree to tree, the weight distribution of the machine changed and it overturned.

HSE one of the vehicle's stabiliser feet had slid off a ground mat and then sunk into the soft ground at the side of the compacted path. The wrong type of ground mats had been provided to the team to put underneath the machine's feet.

The council had failed to properly plan and organise the safety aspects of the tree pruning work and employees had never been trained to work in soft, sloping or uneven ground.

HSE Inspector David Welsh said: “A young man has suffered life-changing injuries as a result of a number of failures by Bradford Council but we could easily have been dealing with a fatal injury considering the distance of this worker's fall.”