Work at height

A product surveillance study of telescopic leaning ladders sold online and in-store has found that 80% of the work at height equipment tested failed the required safety tests designed to keep users safe.

Modus Workspace claimed in court that loss-making projections should have led to reduced penalties.

Winter storms and slashed budgets combined with a lack of skills and awareness are leading to needless deaths in forestry and arboriculture.

A family-run transport and haulage company founded in Newcastle upon Tyne in the 1930s has been fined £200,000 after a longstanding employee died from injuries sustained in a fatal fall.

World-renowned former steelwork specialist, Cleveland Bridge UK Ltd, has been fined £1.5 million by Teesside Crown Court following a case where an electrician fell more than 20 feet to his death from a gantry crane.

A Salford construction firm has been fined £42,500 and its director handed a community order after Manchester Crown Court found the business had undertaken unsafe work on the roof of the Iraqi Consulate in central Manchester in early 2019.

On 15 January 2022 at Cambridge Magistrates Court, Peter Saunders Builders Ltd was fined £16,000 after pleading guilty to breaching regulation 8 (a) of the Work at Height Regulations 2005, following an incident that saw one of its workers, Sean Harding, fall from height and subsequently die.

An award-winning engineer and a former head of safety at John Lewis discuss the dangers of making assumptions about the causes of escalator accidents, and how best to encourage safe behaviour among members of the public.

A company that manufactures and supplies artificial trees has been fined £40,000 after one of its staff fell five metres from a ladder and suffered serious injuries while trying to retrieve stock.

A company has been fined £40,000 after a worker fell 36ft (11 metres) and was left paralysed from the waist down when the concrete floor he was working on collapsed beneath him.