A man has suffered a serious spinal injury after falling from a barn roof and could make a personal injury claim to compensate him for his suffering.
The victim – who chose not to be named – was working for IFT Services on a job at Clipstone Park Farm near Mansfield when he sustained his injury. A Health and Safety Executive (HSE) investigation found that he had been working from a cage attached to a telehandler, but needed to step out onto a scaffold board to continue his work.
The investigation found that this board had nothing in place to prevent the fall from happening, which could help the victim’s personal injury claim. He fell four-to-five metres onto a grain bucket, which caused him a spinal injury (five broken vertebrae) and a head injury (a fractured skull), as well as possibly giving rise to internal injuries claims.
IFT Services admitted breaching health and safety rules and received a £4,000 fine, as well as being ordered to pay costs of £2,000. After the trial at Mansfield magistrates’ court, HSE inspector Lee Greatorex remarked that "the worker was extremely lucky to survive. The work on the barn roof should not have been carried out in the way it was and the fall could have been avoided had appropriate safety measures been taken."
He adds that "falls from height are the biggest causes of workplace deaths and it’s crucial that employers make sure work is properly planned, appropriately supervised and that sufficient measures are put in place to protect staff from these risks." HSE figures show that in 2009/2010, 12 people died after falls from heights of greater than two metres, whilst there were 771 injuries.
Falls from lower heights are much more common, with there being 7,793 incidents of falls from below two metres, as well as slip or trip injuries. One person who will be including in these statistics next year is Jennifer Wrigley from Paddock in West Yorkshire, after she fell on a pavement outside of a school.
Her husband Richard is making a personal injury claim on her behalf as he claims that she caught her foot in a "depression", which twisted her ankle and caused a wrist injury when she fell. He told the Huddersfield Daily Examiner that Jennifer has had "a heck of a lot of pain" to deal with and has had to have an operation to insert a metal plate in his damaged wrist.
Reported by Fiona Campbell
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