The cost of not checking how good your contractor is

A recent court case highlights many of the issues raised with the recent revision of the CDM Regulations that came into force on April 6th.

One of the UK’s largest toy manufacturer and importer needed some gutters clearing on their 3,344 square metre asbestos cement roof. As a result of a recommendation by one of their employees, the company appointed the employee's father, an unemployed builder, and his mate to do the work. Unfortunately the mate fell nine metres through a plastic skylight and suffered fatal injuries.

Both the company and the builder were prosecuted by the Health and Safety Executive. The company was fined £200,000 and the builder was given a six-month jail sentence suspended for a year by Preston Crown Court. The company admitted a single breach of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 by failing to ensure the workers safety and was also ordered to pay £10,483 towards prosecution costs.

Basically, the company did no checks at all on the competency of the builder they employed. They did not ask for, or see risk assessments, method statements, or any other paperwork and as a result they had no idea as to how the work was to be carried out. Bear in mind this is a multi-national company with bases in the UK, Hong Kong, and Germany and with a multi-million pound turnover. At the time of the incident the company had no full time health and safety manager, they do now!

Under the new CDM regulations the Client has much more responsibility and a situation like this should never arise, however, if a company of this size does no checks, what about all those thousands of smaller companies around the country?