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Council fined £12,000 over employee fall A Bradford Council employee fell from the cradle of a truck-mounted cherry picker By Roger Brown BRADFORD COUNCIL has been fined £12,000 after an employee fell 11rn from the cradle of a truck-mounted cherry picker, narrowly escaping death.
In a Health and Safety Executive (HSE) prosecution, Bradford Magistrates' Court was told that the 23-year-old arboricultural worker was working at a height of 35ft to prune dead branches in Bierley Hall Woods in July 2012. Two tree workers set up the cherry picker correctly on a compacted path in the woods. One was working in the extended cradle among the tree tops but, as he rotated the boom arm and cradle anti-clockwise to move from tree to tree, the weight distribution of the machine changed.
When the weight shifted, one of the vehicle's stabiliser feet slid off a ground mat and then sank into the soft ground at the side of the compacted path. The team had been provided with the wrong type of ground mats and the unbalanced machine overturned without warning, sending the man crashing to the ground. He suffered multiple injuries including fractures to his spine, collar bone, pelvis and right leg, plus internal injuries that required surgery. He was off work for more than five months and, although he has since returned, he can no longer do tree work at height.
An HSE investigation identified that the council had failed to properly plan and organise the safety aspects of the tree pruning work. No one had realised that the distance between the stabiliser feet was greater than the width of the path. In addition, none of the workers who did tree work in off-road locations had been trained to do the work in soft, sloping or uneven ground. All the training had been done in a depot yard.
Bradford Council was also ordered to pay £9,623 costs after admitting breaching Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 by failing to ensure the safety of an employee while working at height.
After the hearing, HSE inspector David Welsh said: "The use of a vehiclemounted cherry picker for work at height needs to be properly organised. The council failed to assess the risks and provided unsuitable mats, which led to an unsafe system of work."
Summing up Working at height must be carefully planned and mganisec4 and workers need the correct equipment.