BT has paid out more than £500,000 for a fall-from-height accident for the second time inside a month.
The telecomms giant was fined £600,000 in late May after two of its employees were injured after falling from height.
The latest incident involved an engineer falling seven metres from a loft in London. Worker David Spurgeon was fixing a telephone fault in the roof void of a residential block of flats when he lost his balance and fell through the ceiling, landing on a concrete stairwell, breaking his back and his ankles.
The incident occurred in May 2011 and following an investigation by the HSE, it was found that there was a number of management failures by BT, including inadequate planning of work taking place near fragile surfaces and proper checks that it was carried out safely.
BT was found guilty of breaching Section 2(1) of the Safety and Health at Work etc Act 1974 and was fined £500,000 and ordered to pay costs of £98,913.51.
The judge criticised BT for attempting to blame its own engineers for the incident. He described its approach as being “not necessary, misplaced, and unfortunate”.
HSE inspector Kevin Smith said: “There were a number of failures of health and safety management by BT which related to planning the work, supervision, and checking it was being carried out safely. Work at height needs to be properly planned, and this incident could have been prevented.”
