Roofing company fined for unsafe scaffold modification

A roofing company has been fined £2,000 after untrained workers modified a scaffold so they could pass roof tiles down to the ground.

Passing Health and Safety Executive inspectors caught the men, who were at risk of falling more than 4m.

Steve Emery Roofing of Newcastle-under-Lyme was today fined over the incident that occurred on 28 January 2008 and ordered by the Newcastle-under-Lyme Magistrate’s Court to pay £1,160 in costs.

The court heard the men were seen working on a terrace home where they had changed the boards on the scaffold to allow them to pass roof tiles from person to person down to the ground.

Magistrates heard this situation arose because of a lack of planning to avoid unsafe working at height during the tile reclamation process.

HSE spokesman Martin Overstall said: “Scaffolding boards had been removed from the eaves scaffold platform to make an improvised platform at around 2m to enable the tiles to be handed down from person to person.

“There were wide gaps in both platforms through which workers could fall and there was an absence of edge protection and tow boards on the lower platform.

“Workers were not trained scaffolders and the end result was clearly unsafe.”