Shropshire Firm Fined After Worker’s Fall From Height

15/11/2011

A Shropshire poultry farm has been fined £6,000 and ordered to pay £6,276 costs after an agency worker was seriously injured due to falling nearly three metres from a makeshift platform.

Shrewsbury Magistrates Court heard that Llynclys Farm Ltd, of The Mill, Morton, Oswestry, had admitted breaching safety regulations after a 36-year-old man fractured his pelvis in two places and suffered a collapsed lung after he fell from stacks of cages that he was walking on as he moved hens from the company's site at Stoke Heath Farm, Market Drayton in July 2009.

The incident prompted The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) to fine Llynclys Farm Ltd for breaching Regulation 6(3) of the Work at Height Regulations 2005.

Stephen Nye, a workplace injury specialist at Irwin Mitchell, said: “Time and time again we are contacted by people who need help as they have suffered an injury in a fall from height at work, and it is disturbing just how regularly we are contacted over completely avoidable incidents such as this.”

He continues: “Falling from height continues to be the most common cause of workplace deaths and those who survive are often left with serious, life changing injuries.

“Firms should be fully familiar with the Work at Height and Constructions regulations, and cannot ignore the warnings and advice they are given about health and safety. It is absolutely vital that lessons are learned which will go some way to preventing similar incidents like this occurring and to help stop this worrying trend.”