DOCKYARD FIRMS FINED £900K OVER WORKER'S FALL

DEVONPORT DOCKYARD AND CONTRACTOR KAEFER FAILED TO LEARN FROM INCIDENT TWO YEARS EARLIER 

- BANDY PHILLIPS

FINES totalling almost £900,000 have been handed to Devonport Dockyard and contractor Kaefer Limited after a scaffolder sustained serious injuries falling through an unprotected hole in a Royal Navy warship.

Plymouth Magistrates Court heard that contractors failed to heed a warning over unprotected holes on the warship HMS Bulwark following a similar incident two years earlier, when another worker fell into the very same hole but avoided serious injury as he managed to climb back out.

Both companies admitted health and safety breaches following a prosecution prepared by the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) after the incident on April 11 last year.

was A Kaefer Limited employee dismantling scaffolding inside a ballast tank, as part of maintenance work on board HMS Bulwark at Devonport Royal Dockyard.

On this occasion, an uncovered hole, which allows water to move between decks within the tank, lay below where the employee was dismantling the scaffolding.

He climbed down the ladder, but as he stepped back he fell 15ft through the exposed hole onto the lower tank floor.