The Barnsdale Hall Hotel (now the Rutland Hall Hotel and Spa) has been fined £146,700 together with £50,000 of costs after pleading guilty to a section 2 offence under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, after a serious incident left an employee with life-changing injuries. 

On 24 May 2021, hotel employee Andrew Veasey was tasked with removing a loose tree branch with a colleague using a non-integrated working platform attached to a JCB vehicle. When the platform was raised with Mr Veasey in situ, the vehicle toppled over and crushed the roof of a car before falling into a bank, causing Mr Veasey serious injury and leading to him requiring resuscitation at the scene. 

An investigation by Peterborough City Council on behalf of Rutland County Council highlighted serious deficiencies in the hotel’s risk assessments, safe systems of work, training and instruction and safe use of machinery, especially in relation to ‘non-routine’ tasks. 

This prosecution serves as a reminder for employers to carefully consider the risks of asking employees to perform tasks that are infrequent or require specialist skills. While it may incur costs for organisations to pay for a task to be carried out by a specialist contractor, this is often a necessary measure to ensure the task is completed by competent individuals and in such a manner to ensure the continued safety of employees, customers, residents, the public etc. 

As demonstrated here, a failure to ensure, so far as reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare of an employee can cause irreparable damage.