Firm fined for electrical shock incident

Health & Safety update 04/01/2012

A Warrington home renovation company has been fined £8,000 after failing to protect a worker from an electrical shock that could have proven fatal.

Wain Homes (North West) Ltd was prosecuted by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) after the 42-year-old worker was thrown across the room and knocked unconscious by a 230-volt electric shock from a cable that he had been told did not have power running through it.

The worker, who had been taken on as a casual labourer, was carrying out a renovation on an old farmhouse in Pemberton in November 2010 when the incident took place.

The prosecution found that a construction plan for the project had identified live electricity cables as being a potential danger during the work, but that Wain Homes had not subsequently established whether the existing cables were live or had been properly isolated.

HSE investigating inspector, Thomas Merry, said that the worker had been left severely psychologically scarred, but that the consequences could have been much worse.

"It could easily have resulted in several people being badly injured or even killed," he explained. "Building firms carrying out work on sites where there are existing power supplies must make sure they are located and tested before starting work. It's astonishing that Wain Homes failed to do this, especially after a gas pipe was damaged on the site more than two months before the incident because the company hadn't carried out the proper checks."

Wain Homes, which is based in Birchwood, Warrington, was fined £8,000 and charged with £2,095 in prosecution costs at Trafford Magistrates' Court on 23 December 2011.

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