Building firm fined £2k after scaffolding fall

A Paisley building firm has been fined over an accident in which a worker suffered a serious back injury.

Greenock Sheriff Court heard how David Pentland, a labourer with Peter Stewart & Son Builders, plunged from scaffolding and sustained a broken vertebra.

Pentland was helping build an extension to a two-storey property in Kilmacolm when the accident happened in July last year.

Depute fiscal Euan Cameron told the court the Paisley firm had failed to carry out checks to ensure the scaffolding was secured.

He said: "A ledger was missing, which would have held the scaffolding boards together but, without it, the boards collapsed and the worker fell to the ground."

Defence lawyer Craig Turnbull added: "The ledger was in place to begin with and it has never been established how or by whom it was removed.

"However, the fact remains that a system of inspection ought to have picked this up and the company accepts its responsibility."

Turnbull added that Pentland had recovered from his injuries and is now employed as a baggage handler at Glasgow Airport.

The company, of Underwood Road, Paisley, admitted breaching the Health and Safety at Work Act and was fined £2,000.