A worker in The London Borough of Tower Hamlets received serious burns when he came into a sudden contact with an electrical cable that was laid underground and was live.
The courts subsequently claimed a penalty of £15,000 against The London Borough of Tower Hamlets and ordered an additional £39,000 for violating the Health and Safety at Work Act.
The Essex based Lighting Corporation T Cartledge Ltd the company the man was working for also faced fines of £18,000 and £14,555 for violation of Health and Safety at Work Act in a separate trial over the same incident.
The accident took place in October 2005, when the construction worker named Martin Rose, was working with a mechanical breaker (this is a machine that is used to break up concrete) on behalf of T Cartledge in the Tower Hamlets area. He suffered a strike from a live 132k V electrical cable when he had been trying to set up a lamppost on the footpath.
The investigating officer, Janet Seggery for the Health and Safety Department said that “the incident could have been avoided if the company just had furnished the plans of underground cables to the worker and superintended the work.”
The investigation conducted by the HSE indicated that both The Tower Hamlets and T Cartledge failed to supply the worker any kind of sketch that identifies the underground cables, and also they didn’t oversee the work as it was being conducted.
All company’s dealing with potentially unforeseen and dangerous situations need to make themselves and their staff aware of the Health and Safety regulations with regard to their needs, the NEBOSH qualification from Workplace Law Training can help.