A garage has been fined £12,000 after a customer  was crushed by his own vehicle at a garage in North London.  Tottenham resident Mahmut Emanet is “lucky to be alive”, according to an inspector from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).

We speak to HSE inspector Kevin Smith about how a failure during cradle manufacture, and then two failures to safety test it, led to two men falling 90ft down the side of a tower block.  Just over three years ago, two workers – Marcel Botnaru and Radu Baracu – were in a cradle working on level nine of a residential tower that was under construction in Pennington Street, London. However, as they manoeuvred the cradle, it fell 90 ft to the ground below. Miraculously, although the men suffered significant injuries, they both survived.HSE inspector Kevin Smith explained how this incident, with its obvious potential for a fatal outcome, came about.

MD Safety comment:  This will have significant and direct impact for business managing properties and will have indirect impacts for many others.

The Building Safety Regulator (BSR) has published its first three-year strategic plan. 

BSR is leading a critical change in culture and behaviours across industry and the whole built environment. The strategic plan establishes a vision to create a built environment where everyone is competent and takes responsibility to ensure buildings are of high quality and are safe.

This represents the most significant change to regulation of building safety for a generation and means residents and other building users can be confident that industry is working together to make sure the tragedies of the past will never be repeated.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has launched an investigation into the fire at a high-rise under construction in Reading on Thursday.  More than 50 firefighters and aerial equipment were needed to extinguish the fire at the Sir Robert McAlpine site. 

A rendering company in Manchester has been fined £3,000 after a HSE inspector noticed unsafe scaffolding on a house renovation as he happened to be driving past.  The company had been issued with a Prohibition Notice after a HSE inspector drove through the area on 17 February 2022 and spotted the scaffolding its workers were using at the property.

A lift maintenance company has been fined after an employee died while working at a factory run by Muller Yogurt and Desserts. Lift Monitoring Systems Limited, previously known as RJ Lift Services Limited, was fined £200,000 on Monday following a Health and Safety Executive (HSE) investigation into the death of 24-year-old Lewis McFarlin, a lift engineer employed by the Staffordshire company. 

The blaze broke out in Reading city centre on Thursday (23 November) morning, with the site having to be evacuated.  A man was also seen to be trapped on a high-rise building next to the one that was burning, and was filmed being lifted to safety by a crane.  Two people were taken to Royal Berkshire Hospital for smoke inhalation.

MD Safety comment:  Very worrying statistics.

Construction Management is the highest circulation construction-based publication serving the UK built environment.  The number of fatalities in construction has risen by 55% since last year and is the highest of any industry, according to Health and Safety Executive (HSE) data.

A company in the entertainment industry has been fined £16,000 following the death of a worker.  Russell Bowry, a self-employed rigger, was working at ELP Broadcast and Events Ltd’s Cardington Hangar Studios in Bedfordshire when he fell from height on 13 March 2018.

A crane operator has rescued a worker from a roof close to a burning building.  Firefighters were called to the Station Hill development in Reading, which has since been cordoned off, at 11:40 GMT.  Video footage from social media shows a person being lifted by a crane from the roof of a building, prompting applause from a crowd below.