Construction companies prosecuted on safety failings

The health and safety of workers and members of the public on or near sites must be the utmost priority for all construction businesses. However, the regulations are often only acknowledged in passing – or even ignored in the pursuit of a hasty completion.

Three recent cases in the UK where the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) took firms to court illustrate both the range of safety concerns that can arise and the varied responsibilities of professionals to prevent dangerous conditions on site.

Failure to fulfil the responsibilities of a principal designer or principal contractor, if relevant to your position, can have severe repercussions.

The building work was carried out in phases and, in one of the later phases, inadequacies in fire safety were found both on the site and in work that had already been completed.

In May 2023, the Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service (LFRS) visited an apartment building in Preston city centre that had formerly been a warehouse.

While inspection by fire authorities was not at the time a mandatory requirement, some took a proactive approach, especially with complex conversions of this kind. 

The inspection identified a number of fire safety issues, and LFRS immediately prohibited use of the building, meaning that residents already occupying the completed flats had to leave their homes.

LFRS then collaborated with the HSE to deal with the premises, as construction work by Glovers Court was still ongoing. An HSE inspector visiting the site discovered that the company was not complying with its duty to ensure that suitable fire safety precautions were in place.

Those failures included:

• no fire detection system had been installed
• no means of raising the alarm in case of a fire was provided
• escape plans were inadequate
•  the phasing of the construction work did not ensure compartmentation was maintained throughout to prevent fire spreading to all floors.

These failures resulted in the HSE serving both an immediate prohibition notice – stopping work until adequate precautions were in place – as well as an improvement notice requiring the design and implementation of a fire management plan.

Subsequent visits by the HSE inspector in June and November 2023 found that the prohibition and improvement notices had been ignored, with Glovers Court taking no action to comply with these, and construction work had been ongoing.

In this case, the construction firm was in breach of the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 (CDM); specifically, regulations 11 and 13, which respectively require the principal designer and principal contractor to 'coordinate health and safety matters' at pre-construction and construction phases.

Glovers Court was also found guilty of two breaches of section 33(1)(g) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, '[i]t being an offence for a person to contravene any requirement or prohibition imposed by an improvement notice or a prohibition notice'.

The HSE publication HSG168 Fire safety in construction aims to support dutyholders in planning fire safety during project design and construction phases.

For lower-risk projects, the guidance should be sufficient to help with carrying out a fire risk assessment. However, for complex or high-risk projects, a competent person with the skills, knowledge and experience in fire risk assessments on construction sites, such as a fire engineer, should be engaged to provide specialist advice.

This left a worker with burns so serious that he hasn't worked in the three years since then. The explosion also propelled debris on to the pavement and a residential road outside the site, putting the public at risk of injury.

An HSE investigation determined that the contractor – Barry Newman, the sole trader of Foster Brother Builders – had failed to carry out a suitable risk assessment or provide equipment that was suitably and adequately maintained for the work being carried out.

The instructions for the space heater were clear that it should only be used in well-ventilated areas. LPG should not be stored or used in basements as it is heavier than air and in the event of a leak can present a risk of fire, explosion or suffocation.

The HSE guidance – L22 Safe use of work equipment covers compliance with the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 (PUWER). On a construction site these duties are reinforced by those placed on the principal contractor by the CDM Regulations.

In June, the contractor pled guilty to a breach of regulation 4(3) of PUWER, which states that '[e]very employer shall ensure that work equipment is used only for operations for which, and under conditions for which, it is suitable'.

He was sentenced to 12 months' imprisonment, suspended for two years, ordered to complete 240 hours of unpaid work in the community, and required to pay costs of £2,000.

While resolving an issue with the connections of structural beams as required by the inspection, the first floor collapsed and injured four workers – two of them seriously. It was only luck that prevented this accident resulting in a fatality.

Poor coordination of works meant that two activities undermining the support of the floor took place simultaneously: one worker was cutting a support beam with an oxyacetylene torch while another removed supporting Acrow props from the same beam.

This incident was entirely preventable and had resulted only after several sequential failings.

• The initial errors in the steel connection that prompted the remedial works should have been avoided by better quality control during the construction phase.
• Failure by the principal contractor to manage the temporary works meant that the structure was not adequately supported during the remedial works.
• The construction phase plan should have been reviewed to coordinate and accommodate the remedial works safely.

In L153 Managing health and safety in construction, and The management of temporary works in the construction industry, the HSE provides guidance that would have helped prevent these failings.

The first stage in managing temporary works of this kind is formally appointing a temporary works coordinator (TWC), who is responsible for ensuring that the necessary procedures are in place to control the works.

The TWC's responsibilities include managing the temporary works register, which is a list of all known works of this kind associated with the project, detailing the stages they must pass through and identifying the specific requirements, through the design process to construction, inspections and dismantling.

In June this year, contractor Aryn Stones Ltd was found guilty of breaching CDM regulation 19(1), which requires that all practicable measures must be taken to prevent danger to any person and ensure that any new or existing structure does not collapse if, due to construction work, it becomes unstable. The firm was fined £50,000 and charged a further £39,000 in costs.

Serious failings in safety can have tragic consequences for those involved, and significant penalties for the individuals or organisations responsible for coordinating activities on site.

Under the CDM Regulations, dutyholders can be prosecuted directly for their failings, because their responsibilities to ensure safety throughout the project life cycle are absolute and cannot be delegated.