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15 September 2016
A home conservatory manufacturer and installer has designed a new, patent -pending safety barrier for use across all of
its sites after a 59-year-old employee fell off a conservatory roof.
Image credit: HSE
Manchester-based Phil Coppell specialises in conservatory roof installations. On 29 June 2015 two employees were
repairing a tiled conservatory roof at a property in Newton-le-Willows, Merseyside. The job required them to take off
the tiles, peel back a waterproof membrane and replace a piece of plywood that was sagging.
One of the men decided to climb off the roof and access the two bottom rows of tiles from a stepladder below. He was
not using a roof ladder and walked across to a corner of the conservatory to get down. He slipped, his foot became
caught in the gutter and he fell headfirst on to the stone patio 2.5 m below.
He sustained a bleed on the brain from a fractured skull and a shattered eye socket. He was in hospital for five days
and off work for almost four months. He has returned to Phil Coppell but now works in the company’s factory.
“For work on sloping roofs we’d expect to see the use of a cat ladder or a properly constructed roof ladder,
” said
Health and Safety Executive (HSE) inspector Christine McGlynn.
“We would not consider the nature of this work to
be short duration work and we’d also expect to see some edge protection, such as the use of a tower scaffold that
would have acted as a form of fall protection if the workers had slipped back.
”
During its investigation, the HSE found that the victim had had a previous fall while working for the company. In
December 2013 he had been working alone when he slipped off a roof and was knocked unconscious. Phil Coppell
recorded the accident but did not report it to the HSE under RIDDOR (the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and
Dangerous Occurrences Regulations). In August that same year another fitter broke six ribs when he fell through a
conservatory roof light. This incident also went unreported.