When children treat a construction site like a playground
What happened?
A construction site was a new-build housing development, managed by Howard Civil Engineering Ltd, next to an existing housing estate and adjacent to busy pedestrian footpaths and roads in Worsborough, South Yorkshire, in July 2015. A 7 year-old boy went missing from home one morning, and was found the next morning by workers at the construction site.
He had become trapped in a drainage pipe, which had been fixed into the ground in preparation for the installation of fencing posts. He had suffocated before being found the next morning when work restarted on site.
The HSE found that there was insufficient fencing in place to prevent unauthorised persons from accessing the construction site due to a combination of poor planning, management and monitoring of the site and its perimeter. The HSE inspector said “He should never have been able to be on that site. He should have been kept out. The construction industry should be aware of the dangers of construction sites to members of the public and any other unauthorised persons.
The dangers to children gaining access to construction sites and treating them like a playground is an ongoing problem which must be addressed at all types of sites no matter what their complexity or size.
The industry must do all it can to ensure children can’t access construction sites and be exposed to the inherent risks they present to prevent further tragedies like this from occurring.”
Legal Outcome
In the August 2022 court case, Howard Civil Engineering Ltd pleaded guilty to breaching regulation 13(4)(b) of the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 and to breaching Section 3 (1) of the Health & Safety at Work etc Act 1974. They were fined £600K and ordered to pay £42,952.88 in costs.
What can we learn from what happened?
The HSE inspector’s comments say it all really, and there are, and there will be, a number of case studies in this library that relate to unprotected access to construction sites. The comment ‘all types of sites no matter what their complexity or size’ is especially telling – it is not just big housing estate developments that present risks, any construction work site can be dangerous.
Source of Information
SHP On-line