The Centre for Corporate Accountability recently produced a report on behalf of trade union UCATT called Small isn’t beautiful: construction worker deaths 2007/2008: employer size and circumstance.  The findings of the report confirm the experiences of personal injury law firm Leigh Day & Co who regularly represent injured workers or the families of people who have been killed in workplace accidents. The report revealed that in 2007/8 over half of the construction workers killed worked for companies with fewer than 50 employees. Almost half of these deaths occurred in companies, which employed five or fewer workers. The levels of deaths are disproportionately far higher than the total number of construction workers employed by enterprises of this size.  UCATT is calling for an increase in the number of qualified Health and Safety inspectors as well as a more proactive approach by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) when it comes to investigating such workplace deaths.

Construction is the most dangerous industry in Britain, in 2007/8 72 construction workers were killed. In 2006/7 there were 79 deaths. Alan Ritchie, General Secretary of UCATT, said: “This report sheds fresh light on the dangers faced daily by workers on construction sites. Small companies often do not take safety seriously, that is how tragedies occur. The HSE must introduce a zero tolerance approach to safety and pressure needs to be applied all year round on small construction companies”.

Migrant workers are identified as being at particular risk in the report which shows that migrant building workers are at least twice as likely to die at work than those from the UK.  Twelve migrant workers died in construction-related incidents in 2007/8, a fifth of all fatalities.

Accident at work cases

Leigh Day & Co has acted in a number of such cases.  These include:

• Representing the widow of Kieron Deeney who died on a Laing O’Rourke construction site when he fell 40 feet from an inadequately secured hatch cover.  The verdict into his death was that of unlawful killing. Laing O’Rourke was fined £135,000 on 30 April 2009 after pleading guilty to breaching the Health and Safety at Work Act.
• Obtaining a substantial amount of comensation for the family of a Polish man who died after falling 23m from an industrial boiler platform.
• Securing a payment of £2.5m for a worker who was driving a JCB on a construction site when it toppled over crushing his lower body and right arm.  He suffered catastrophic injuries and spent over 11 months in hospital undergoing treatment for complicated pelvic injuries and serious crush injuries to both legs and his right arm.
• Securing substantial compensation for a Polish construction worker who fell from a makeshift scaffold whist tiling a house.
• Securing substantial compensation for a Polish factory worker who was injured whilst working in a plastics factory when a safety device on the cutting machine he was working was bypassed by a fellow worker.
• Securing substantial compensation for an engineer who lost his right leg below the knee after a workplace accident at a paper manufacturing company in Kent. His leg was crushed by a 4.5 tonne roll of paper which fell from a trolley.

If you would like to speak to one of our lawyer about a workplace claim please contact Sally Moore for a free initial consultation on 020 7650 1200.