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“Prosecution of school for breaching health and safety laws highlights the need for proper training”

Serious injury to staff and thousands of pounds in potential fines, that’s the price employers could pay for failing to take health and safety seriously. That’s the stark warning from Catalis, one of the UK’s leading health and safety training providers, after a school was forced to pay almost £4,500 in fines and costs after a caretaker fell through a roof.

The caretaker suffered four fractured ribs and a gashed head after he fell more than three metres through a glass-fibre roof onto a concrete floor at Brentwood High School while he was clearing up rubbish. He is still suffering recurrent migraines as a result of the fall.

The Essex school was fined £1,500 and ordered to pay £2,862 in costs in June for breaching health and safety regulations by failing to plan and supervise working at heights, and also for failing to report the accident to the Health and Safety Executive for a year.

With the school being a public sector organisation, the fine was substantially less than it could have been had the offending employer been a commercial organisation.

Mark Bowers, Health and Safety Manager at Catalis, which provides health and safety training solutions to commercial organisations and the public sector, said that if the school had taken a more thorough approach to health and safety, the caretaker may not have been hurt and thousands of pounds would have been saved.

Mark said: “For employers, health and safety has moral, legal and financial implications.

“If you don’t deal with health and safety properly, your employees could get hurt. After an incident, the HSE or local authority enforcement officers can take legal action, prosecuting the employer for breaching health and safety regulations. Or, the injured employee sues their employer, and although insurance may cover the payout, the employer subsequently bears the cost of increased premiums.

“In order to protect employees from getting hurt, employers should have proper health and safety management systems in place. Doing so may seem like an expense, but to cut corners on health and safety is a false economy.

“In the case of this school, if they’d have had proper systems in place for working from heights and fragile roofs, they could have prevented all the problems they have faced.

“They should have undertaken a proper risk assessment for the whole site, alongside having a thorough working at height policy, and ensuring that the caretaking staff were properly trained.

“At Catalis, we can provide these services, enabling employees to stay safe and helping employers comply with complex health and safety legislation.”

The school pleaded guilty to breaching the Work at Height Regulations 2005, and also to failing to comply with the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 1995.

Mark said “both pieces of legislation are very complicated and urged employers to ensure that staff are trained by qualified and accredited professionals so that they avoid making the same mistakes.”

Catalis has a wealth of knowledge and experience in offering health and safety training solutions, having provided training to people working in safety critical environments for the last seven decades. It also offers health and safety training for people working in many other industries, including manufacturing, electrical, construction, rail, environmental, energy and the public sector, including H.M. Forces.

Catalis also offers delegates on-site residential facilities at The Derby Conference Centre, run by a sister company, which is centrally located in Derby and within easy reach of the motorway and rail networks and East Midlands airport.

For more information, please contact Mark Bowers, Health & Safety Training Delivery Manager on 07810 508 527