Savill fined £4k after employee falls from height

Savill Fabrications has been fined £4,000 after one of its employees suffered serious injuries after a fall from height at a construction site in Surrey three years ago.

City of London Magistrates heard that Robert Totham was working at a St James Homes construction site at Kew Riverside, Kew, on 25 May 2001 when he fell 2.5m onto a concrete floor.

Health & Safety Executive inspector Alec Ferguson said: “The investigation of this incident revealed that a fairly routine construction activity – the placing of steel beams for the support of concrete floors – was being undertaken without either suitable supervision, or the workers being made aware of how to carry out such work safely."

Savill Fabrications, of Croydon, Surrey, pleaded guilty to a single breach of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974. It was also ordered to pay £10,000 costs.

Between 1998 and 2003, 429 people have been killed on construction sites in the UK. Of those 210 were killed as a result of a fall from height - nearly one person a week on average.

* An HSE prosecution of Amey Rail, after a machine controller, Stuart Light, employed by another contractor, was struck and fell beneath the tyres of a road rail vehicle at Hayle Station, Cornwall, on 25 January 2004 has been adjourned. The Oxford firm will now appear at Camborne Magistrates’ Court on 17 January 2005.