Scaffold director gets jail sentence after worker electrocuted
The director of a scaffolding company has bought a suspended jail sentence after one in every of his workers used to be electrocuted. Ian Pepper, director of Kent-essentially based Canterbury City Scaffolding, has been sentenced to 18 weeks in jail, suspended for 365 days, and ordered to undertake 200 hours of unpaid work and 20
The director of a scaffolding company has bought a suspended jail sentence after one in every of his workers used to be electrocuted.
Ian Pepper, director of Kent-essentially based Canterbury City Scaffolding, has been sentenced to 18 weeks in jail, suspended for 365 days, and ordered to undertake 200 hours of unpaid work and 20 rehabilitation exercise requirement days.
The case linked to 36-yr-ancient employee of Canterbury City Scaffolding, Steven Gilmore, who bought an 11,000-volt shock while building a short-term roof scaffold over an open-air drinks depot in Crawley, West Sussex, in November 2021.
Gilmore struck a live vitality line running across the place while carrying a 6-metre scaffold tube and therefore broke his leg after falling 5 metres to the ground.
The daddy-of-one moreover suffered “existence-changing” electrical burns on his fingers, “which he gained’t ever salvage paunchy spend of”, in step with the Smartly being and Safety Executive (HSE).
The regulator acknowledged Canterbury City Scaffolding and its director failed to form obvious that the job used to be smartly misfortune assessed, with neither making any strive to refer to community operator UK Vitality Networks in regards to the line voltage and protected clearance distances.
The HSE moreover acknowledged the director – who used to be overseeing the work onsite – allowed his team to raise 6-metre long metallic scaffold tubes at shut to=vertical angles within placing distance of the high-voltage line, without taking any precautions.
Canterbury City Scaffolding Ltd pleaded guilty to breaching Fragment 2(1) of the Smartly being and Safety at Work Act 1974, while Pepper pleaded guilty to an offence under Fragment 37(1) of the Smartly being and Safety at Work Act 1974.
The pleas had been made in Brighton Magistrates’ Court docket on 22 September 2023, nevertheless sentencing greatest took location on 15 January. As well to Pepper’s sentence, Canterbury City Scaffolding Ltd used to be fined £50,000.
HSE inspector Susie Beckett acknowledged: “This scaffolder’s accidents had been existence-changing and can were lethal.
“This incident can were refrained from if this high-misfortune scaffold job had been smartly deliberate, together with trying to salvage free recommendation from the community operator on what precautions to rob, and then imposing those successfully-established precautions to forestall unintended contact with the overhead line.”
