Company fined £450k and director and site manager sentenced following death of labourer

A company has been fined £450,000, the firm’s director has received a suspended prison sentence and the site manager sentenced to 130 hours of unpaid work after a labourer was crushed to death at a construction site.

The deceased had been removing supporting metal bars with an angle grinder as part of a large-scale renovation project involving three bordering sites when the structure collapsed. The deceased was not aware the metal bars played a crucial role in supporting the structure. The death occurred at a development site in the Midlands in 2019.

The company continued working on the structure without a proper plan and sequence in place, despite safety measures being known and readily available to the company.

The Crown Prosecution Service said that none of the men working on the building, including the Site Manager who was onsite at the time, had any expertise in demolition work, and there was no risk assessment or safe system of work in place for the task the deceased was undertaking.

In February 2024, The Principal Director of the company, was sentenced to 23 weeks’ imprisonment, suspended for 18 months, for section 33(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974, in that the related offence committed by the company was attributable to neglect on the part of the Principal Director.

Head of the CPS Special Crime Division, said: “Although the Director was not onsite when this tragedy took place, as a Director he owed a duty of care to the work force for any work carried out ….  he and his company failed to plan and carry out the demolition safely, which led to tragic consequences where a man needlessly lost his life.”

They also said “The site manager on the day in question, who had no expertise in demolition, asked the deceased to undertake a task in which they lacked sufficient expertise, which was inherently dangerous. The Site Manager failed to take reasonable care for the health and safety of labourers working at the site.”

The standard of care granted to the deceased by the company was described as “woeful” by a Health and Safety Executive (HSE) expert.

The firm’s director received a suspended prison sentence.

The site foreman, was sentenced to 130 hours of unpaid work after previously pleading guilty to failing to take reasonable care for the health and safety of others at the site.

The company, was fined £450,000 after pleading guilty to corporate manslaughter and section 33(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974, in that it failed to discharge the duty imposed upon it by virtue of regulation 20(1) of the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 where, as a contractor, it failed to plan and carry out the demolition or dismantling of a structure in such a manner as to prevent danger. The firm was also ordered to pay costs of £167,601.