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.

MD Safety comment:  The use of seat belts in FLTs and other operating plant is essential to prevent the operator exiting the vehicle if it overturns.  Their use has to be enforced.  Had they been in this unfortunate case the outcome would have been different.

The mother of a man who was killed when the forklift truck he was driving overturned says she still feels angry as he ‘simply went to work and didn’t come home.’  Jamie Anderson was killed on 4 June 2019, when the forklift truck he was operating overturned at a depot in Newark.

A food company has admitted failures that led to one of its workers being strangled on a machine that makes carrot batons.  Remigiusz Cyrek was choked unconscious after being dragged into the machine and trapped by a giant roller.

Two men working on a residential tower under construction in London were fortunate to escape death when a defective cradle they were in fell about 90 feet.  

It’ll soon be International Men’s Day (Sunday 19 November) which this year comes with the theme, ‘Zero male suicide’. Statistics show that more men die by suicide than any other gender identity. So, writes Vikki Wealands, Chair of the IOSH Construction group, we have to keep talking about it and, even more importantly, do everything we can to help.