A ground worker on a building site was killed yesterday when a construction vehicle overturned.
The accident happened at the site of the Summers Park housing development, in Coxs Hill, Lawford.
The site is being run by Essex-based contractor Rose Builders which is building 150 homes. The worker has not been named, however, he is a man in his 30s from Clacton. Police pronounced him dead at the scene.
Following the incident, Steven Rose, owner of Rose Builders, said: “It is with great regret I can confirm that very sadly there was an accident at Summers Park, Lawford, yesterday where tragically the man involved died.
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“The site is closed down pending an HSE investigation and we are assisting the authorities with their investigation.
“For the moment all our thoughts are with the man’s family.”
This latest death on a construction site comes as contractors begin to feel the full brunt of the new regime of severe fines for site deaths and accidents take hold.
In February the UK introduced new sentencing guidelines where judges now assess the seriousness of a health and safety breach and essentially link the level of the punishment or the fine in most cases to the size of the company, turnover and profit.
In May, Balfour Beatty was fined £2.6m, one of the largest fines ever in the construction sector, after an employee was killed following a trench collapse on site. And at its annual results in the summer Leo Quinn warned that the fines would be crippling for smaller firms and could tip them over the edge. Balfour Beatty has put aside £25m contingency to deal with such fines in the future.
According to data complied by law firm BLM, which monitored construction fines under the new rules from February to June 2016, construction companies as a whole had been hit with almost £8m in health & safety fines since new penalties came into force.
Among the companies that were fined in this period were Balfour Beatty, Travis Perkins and Falcon Cranes. Balfour Beatty took the biggest hit, being fined a total of £3.6m for two incidents where workers were killed, while Travis Perkins was fined £2m for an incident where a customer died after being crushed by company vehicle in company’s yard.
Falcon Cranes was fined £750,000 plus costs when an employee died after falling from a crane as it collapsed and a member of the public was also killed. Legals costs involved were also substantial in all cases.
Firms north of the border in Scotland are now being warned they should be reviewing their own health and safety regimes or face possible huge fines.
This call for board level supervision comes as it looks increasingly likely Scotland could soon follow the rest of the UK and usher in the more stringent regime of health and safety fines, with potential penalties rocketing tenfold.
Malcolm Gunnyeon, a partner in the health & safety team at commercial law firm Maclay Murray & Spens, warned that following the introduction of tough new sentencing guidelines in England and Wales in February, Scotland looks certain to follow suit one way or another, and the effect will be immediate.
Gunnyeon said: “Although Scottish courts are not bound by the English sentencing guidelines, the legislation on health and safety at work is the same, and it seems inconceivable that it should effectively become far cheaper to injure an employee in Scotland than in England or Wales.
“Judges are already taking note of the English guidelines, and the Scottish Sentencing Council is expected to start a consultation on guidelines for Scotland soon. A decision in the High Court, expected later this month, could further accelerate the application of these far more severe fines in Scotland.”
He added that any changes in law would also apply to ongoing cases, stating: “If, or perhaps more likely when, Scotland follows the route taken in England, the new rules will apply immediately to cases being sentenced, irrespective of the date of the incident or offence, and that means that many pending prosecutions could have far greater consequences for the offending firms.”
