A former Mansfield firm has been prosecuted after an employee fell more than four metres through a fragile rooflight while installing solar panels on a barn in Barnsley.

Magistrates in Barnsley heard the 25-year-old worker, from Mansfield, could have been killed, but had escaped with serious injuries to his wrist, which needed pinning to repair the fractured bones.

The incident, on 19 June 2013 at a farm in the town, was investigated by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), which prosecuted DAS Technology Ltd, then based in Mansfield, Nottingham, but which has since gone into liquidation.

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HSE found company had failed to provide any safeguards to protect workers from falls or to mitigate the dangers from working on fragile surfaces. It had also continued to operate in the same way for two days after the fall until the job was finished, with no-one from the company visiting to investigate or install better safety measures.

The court was told DAS Technology Ltd had also been warned by employees within the company that its system of work was unsafe following a similar incident on a roof eight months earlier.

HSE identified that the work on the roof had been badly planned and employees had not been provided with the right equipment. They were either walking on the roof or from ladders spanning it. There were no arrest nets on the underneath, or lightweight staging on the roof to support the workers safely.

DAS Technology Ltd., c/o the Administrators of Regents Park Road, London, was fined a total of £25,000 and ordered to pay £541 in costs after guilty pleas were entered to two breaches of the Work at Height Regulations.

(CD/JP)