Bouncing builder in double roof fall

A builder fell through a roof onto a stack of pallets before bouncing off them and onto the floor below.

Trafford Magistrates Court heard Lee Bridge was cleaning guttering at the Magnesium Elektron factory in Swinton on 6 March 2008 when the fragile roof gave way. He landed on a stack of pallets more than two metres below him, before bouncing off them and falling a further two metres to the concrete floor.

Tower Roofing Ltd of Bury pleaded guilty to breaching the Work at Height Regulations and was fined £3,500 and ordered to pay full costs of £5,976.

HSE Inspector Angelica Rutherford-Hacon said: "Mr Bridge is lucky to be alive and would have been seriously injured if the pallets hadn’t broken his fall.

"The roof he was working on was clearly fragile and should have been boarded out before any attempt was made to clean the guttering. Tower Roofing didn’t think enough about safety in advance of the work starting and put its employees at risk as a result.

"Working on roofs can be extremely dangerous so it’s vital that work is planned properly. Companies should involve the workers who will be doing the job and consult them about the right equipment to use. Those in charge of the work need to ensure that safe methods of working are properly implemented and checked.

"Tower Roofing allowed two of its employees to carry out work on a fragile roof – with one of them working more than six metres above the ground – without having proper safety measures in place.

"It is only by luck that the incident did not result in a fatality and I hope that it will act as a reminder to roofing companies to treat safety as one of their top priorities."