When, despite employee concerns, a scaffold pole is used to move a ridiculously heavy load
What happened?
An employee of a construction company helped to manually move steps weighing in excess of 950kg after repair works had taken place. As a result of this work, the employee sustained a back injury.
The HSE’s investigation found manually moving and realigning steps was a regular occurrence and that employees would use a scaffold pole under the steps to move them back into position. Senior staff knew how the steps were moved and that employees had concerns, as it had been reported.
No suitable risk assessment had been carried out, or safe system of work implemented, to avoid hazardous handling. No equipment or handling aids had been considered to help employees manoeuvre the gantry steps.
Legal Outcome
The company pleaded guilty to breaching Section 2 (1) of the Health and Safety and Work Act 1974 and was fined £144,000 with costs of £32,000.
What can we learn from what happened?
Manual Handling prosecutions are rare, probably because it is harder than in most cases to prove the direct link between the cause of the accident and the injury itself. As a result, it tends to only be the more obvious cases that come to court, and this is an example of an obvious case.
The Manual Handling regs came out in 1992, a long, long time ago. The regs require the assessment of risk, avoidance if possible, and suitable equipment or handling aids of some kind to be used if necessary. Levering a scaffold pole would not be considered a suitable handling aid. So often these basic safety management requirements are not carried out. In this case, employees had expressed concerns, so doubly disappointing.
Source of Information
SHP In-Court