Health and Safety Executive (HSE):

 Company pleads guilty!

A COMPANY and its director have been fined after failing to comply with health and safety regulations and an enforcement notice.
Westminster Magistrates’ Court heard that, between May 2018 and February 2019, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) carried out a series of inspections at a construction site at Chelmsford Road, South Woodford, London following health and safety concerns raised at the site. During the inspections, the site manager and company director Mr Tahir Ahmed was served with two Prohibition Notices and his company, All Type Electrical and Building Limited, were served with two Prohibition Notices and two Improvement Notices. All Type Electrical and Building Limited’s Improvement Notice for competent advice was not complied with.
   


ALL Type Electrical and Building Limited pleaded guilty to breaching Regulation 15(2) of the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015; and Section 21 of The Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974. The company was ordered to pay a fine of £60,000 plus a surcharge of £170 and full costs of £5216.46
Mr Ahmed of Sutlej Road, London, pleaded guilty to breaching Section 21 of The Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974. He was sentenced to 18 weeks’ imprisonment suspended for 12 months, 180 hours of unpaid work, and was ordered to pay a surcharge of £115, and full costs of £5060.69.
After the hearing, HSE inspector David King commented: “This case highlights the need for suitable and sufficient planning, managing and monitoring, using the appropriate work at height equipment and having a competent site manager.
“Dutyholders should be aware that HSE will hold to account those who do not comply with health and safety legislation, or who do not comply with enforcement notices served on them.”
Notes to editors 

1. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is Britain’s national regulator for workplace health and safety. We prevent work-related death, injury and ill health through regulatory actions that range from influencing behaviours across whole industry sectors through to targeted interventions on individual businesses. These activities are supported by globally recognised scientific expertise. www.hse.gov.uk
2. More about the legislation referred to in this case can be found at: www.legislation.gov.uk/
3. HSE news releases are available at http://press.hse.gov.u

How Spain can teach us a thing or two

Zak Garner-Purkis, news editor, Construction News - 12th, April 2018.

SPAINs construction sector was one of the hardest hit in Europe when global recession struck a decade ago.

Fuelled by cheap debt in the noughties, municipalities across the country had embarked on huge developments, until the financial rug was suddenly pulled from under their feet. But amid the chaos and confusion of the financial crash, something very significant happened to the Spanish construction market in the form of a new law on subcontractors. The Spanish government introduced measures to limit the number of subcontractors working a project to three, not including the main contractor. Work could be subcontracted to self-employed workers, but self-employed workers were not able to subcontract. The law also banned the use of subcontractors whose main task was the provision of labour, effectively removing employment agencies from Spain’s construction sector. One of the main drivers behind this pretty stringent regulation was safety. Prior to its introduction, Spain had been responsible for 20 per cent of all workplace accidents in the EU. The new rules insisted companies within the supply chain be registered, with registration dependent on carrying out health and safety training. In that regard it was successful, with Spain now ranking amongst Europe’s safest nations to work. The change in the law a decade ago also aimed to tackle insolvencies in the sector, the results of which are harder to gauge.  The economic difficulties of the past decade make it hard to say whether the legislation led to fewer firms going bust, or if it was just because the sector had shrunk so dramatically. The real question though is: could such rules on subcontractors work in Britain? Well, the UK market is certainly not in as dire a place as the Spanish market was when the last recession began to take hold, but the theory is an interesting one. On paper, the biggest loser under such a system in the UK would be main contractors: deprived of a large supply chain, tier ones would either have to bring expertise in house or downsize the way they manage projects. This could be a beneficial trend. If large projects were broken up into smaller, cheaper lots, the market could open up to lots of smaller contractors who could compete on price. Labour could be sourced locally, and there would be a clear benefit to training in-house labour. Maybe that’s imagining it in an overly optimistic way. But it’s definitely a model worth considering. ******

Construction News report: Crossrail Death

A Slovakian engineer who was killed working on Crossrail may have been vulnerable because of his limited English and fellow workers’ impatience, a coroner heard today.

René Tkacik was was killed while spraying concrete 32ft below Fisher Street, Holborn, for the Bam Ferrovial Kier joint venture on last year.

At an inquest into his death at St Pancras Coroner’s Court, Mr Tkacik’s widow Renata described her husband as a 'highly experienced' sprayer who was left unsure what to do because of his 'rudimentary' English.  She claimed Mr Tkacik took a dictionary to work but colleagues were rude to him because of communication problems.  Mrs Tkacik said her husband had a 'difficult living condition' in the accommodation provided for him by his employers.

'He didn’t sleep properly and was constantly tired,' she told the court and 'his English was rudimentary and he complained to me that when he went to work he didn’t know what to do.  He always had a dictionary with him, but even that was not enough.'

She added that Mr Tkacik’s colleagues had little time for him because of his limited English, and were often 'rude'.

Demonstrators from trade unions Unite, Ucatt and GMB protested outside the court this morning, calling for the unionisation of the £15bn Crossrail project.  Placards displayed outside the court read 'No more site deaths' and 'People before profit'.  Mr Tkacik was crushed to death by a concrete slab while working in the tunnel in the early hours of 7 March 2014.

The 44-year-old was pronounced dead at 6.14am by doctors who took six minutes to get to him in the tunnel.

Mr Tkacik was left with “devastating injuries entirely incompatible with life,” and would have died instantaneously, the court heard.

His death was recorded as blunt force trauma to the head and chest.

Mrs Tkacik described her husband as a teetotaller with an eye for detail.  A toxicology report following his death showed no signs of alcohol, caffeine, or drugs in Mr Tkacik’s system.

Mrs Tkacik said he was a ‘highly qualified’ sprayer and blaster who had worked on various jobs, including tunnelling work.

When Mr Tkacik first joined Crossrail as a sprayer he passed four examinations, all set in English.
A Crossrail spokesperson said:
'Everyone who works on Crossrail was affected by this terrible incident.  Our thoughts and sympathies are with RenéTkacik’s family and colleagues.  Crossrail has a good safety record and sets the most stringent contractor safety requirements in the industry. Safety has always been, and continues to be, the number one value for Crossrail and critical to the success of the programme.  There is nothing so important on Crossrail that it cannot be done safely. This terrible incident only increased that resolve.'

'Elf 'N Safety' in Tory Britain!

For all those Tory Party members and readers of the Daily Mail, who think that health and safety for workers in Britain has become a big joke, they should watch this video.

This incident took place last month on Stamford Street, Ashton-under-Lyne, Greater Manchester. A structural engineer was working atop a cherry picker, just inches away from a two-storey building when it collapsed in front of him. Eye-witnesses described how the workman had removed just a single brick from the building when it came crashing down in front of him.

Fortunately no one was injured and the police quickly cordoned off the area. A blue plaque which was displayed on the front of the building, shows that this was once the home of Francis Thompson, the Catholic poet, from Ashton-under-Lyne, who was a member of the Rhymers' Club which met at the 'Olde Cheshire Cheese' pub in Fleeet Street, London, in the 1890s. Among its members, were Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats and Ernest Dowson.

No Building Site Deaths in 2014!

Seasons greetings to you.

Thank you for allowing us to have your e-mail address to keep you in touch with the Construction Safety Campaign.

We are hoping to really get this campaign moving in 2014 because there have been enough lives ruined because of lack of proper health and safety on construction sites.

We now have a facebook page and we hope this will be used to reach new people, keep everyone in touch with what's happening, including demonstrations or lobby's and will be a useful forum for members to flag up any issues you may know about, share information and advertise your safety campaign events. Find us at www.facebook/ConstructionSafetyCampaign and 'like' the page.

Lets make 2014 the year that no construction worker is killed or seriously injured due to lack of care by the employers.

Best wishes,

CSC Secretary.