Skanska Rashleigh Weatherfoil fined £60,000 for health and safety breaches

Skanska Rashleigh Weatherfoil was fined a total of £60,000 and order to pay costs of £13, 369 at Aylesbury Crown Court last week following breaches of the Health and Safety at Work Act.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) carried out an investigation after John Brookes from Essex, David Powell from Chelmsford and Noah Eastwood from Tilbury, suffered electrical flash burns following an incident on 22 December 2005 in St Just House, Sunrise Parkway in Milton Keynes.

The three men were carrying out work on an air circuit breaker (ACB) in the switchroom to upgrade the power supply. They had switched off the ACB thereby ensuring the load side bus bars were dead. But the sub-station supplying the ACB had not been switched off, which meant the supply side bus bars were still live.

During the work the men's hands or spanners came into contact with the live bus bar, resulting in all three men being taken to Milton Keynes Hospital.

The court found that the site personnel of both Skanska and Wirepoint were not experienced in working on or close to live exposed equipment. Their personal tools were un-insulated, as the men had no requirement, for their normal work, to buy insulated tools.

Skanska Rashleight Weatherfoil was fined £30,000 for breaching Section 2 (1) of the HSWA 1974 and a further £30,000 for breaching Section 3 (1) of the HSWA 1974.

Judge Cripps said: "Skanska's system of management failed, there was no proper risk assessment or method statement prepared, there was nothing in writing to the workmen involved and there was failure in the management to follow procedure for health and safety."

However, he added: "Full credit for early plea and new procedures now in place."