Waste disposal firm fined £8k over worker fall

A waste disposal firm has been prosecuted after an employee fell over 6m from a crane.

Wolverhampton-based MES Environmental Ltd was fined a total of £8,000 and ordered to pay costs of over £3,500, after pleading guilty to breaching the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and the Work at Height Regulations 2005.

The prosecution followed an incident in June 2008, when a man fell while working on the cross travel beam of a crane. He suffered multiple fractures to his skull, a broken collarbone and several broken ribs and was forced to remain in hospital for several weeks.

He has still not returned to work.

HSE investigating inspector David Evans said: "Falls from height remain the single biggest cause of workplace deaths and one of the main causes of major injury, but the vast majority of these accidents are preventable if companies assess the risks properly.

"The most common causes of falls from height involve failure to recognise a problem, provide safe systems of work, ensure that these systems are followed and provide adequate information, instruction, training or supervision. There really is no excuse for this.”