Prosecution Details

Being an employer, failed, so far as was practicable, to provide and maintain a working environment in which its employees were not exposed to hazards.

The defendant, which operated from premises in Welshpool, was a metal manufacturing company that specialised in the production of tanks, pump housings (called skid enclosures) and other assemblies for mining use.

On 12 June 2001 three employees were working on dismantling an enclosure to prepare it for despatch. One employee was using the only scaffold, so another employee, who needed to work at height, was using one of two available ladders, when the ladder legs splayed open and he fell approximately two metres onto the metal floor of the skid enclosure whilst still holding onto the ladder. He sustained bruising to his neck and shoulders, cut his head and fractured ribs. He was off work for 17 days.

The ladder concerned was an A-frame aluminium one, 2.4 metres in height. The safety locking latches, which attached the two sides of the ladder to make the A-frame, were broken and they had been replaced by two pieces of rope.

Workers were required to work at varying heights when assembling and dismantling the enclosures. The only equipment for working at height that had been provided to employees was one mobile scaffold, a vertical ladder and two A-frame ladders.

The defendant did not take the ladder from which the injured employee fell out of service until four days after the accident.

It was practicable for the defendant to have provided appropriate working platforms for working at heights and instructed its employees in relation to the sort of platforms that should have been used for working at heights.

The defendant pleaded guilty. The penalty was imposed under section 19(6).

convicted