A construction worker and a site manager have been fined after another employee broke his leg when a concrete skip fell on top of him in South London.

Self-employed worker Michael Kernan, of CYC Coastal Club, Marine Parade, Sheerness, pleaded guilty to breaching Regulation 8(1) (c) of the Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998. He was fined £1,500 with £2,000 in costs.

Site manager Christopher Crowley, of Dominion Drive, Collier Row, London, pleaded guilty to breaching Regulation 9(1)( a) of the Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998. He was fined £1,000 with £2,500 in costs.

Woolwich Crown Court heard how Ryan Musgrave was working on a construction site at the Harris Academy in Welling on 23 February 2012.

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While working, the 27-year-old suffered a badly broken left leg and fractures to his right ankle and several ribs, when an empty concrete skip weighing 215kg became detached from an excavator and fell onto him. As a result, he was unable to work for 17 months.

A Health and Safety Executive (HSE) investigation found that there was no thorough examination certificate for the shackle on the excavator, and the shackle was defective.

Speaking after the case HSE inspector Melvyn Stancliffe said: "Mr Crowley should have taken the shackle on the excavator out of use when he inspected it two days before the incident as he had not seen a thorough examination report for it.

"The law is clear that lifting accessories must not be used unless they have been thoroughly examined in the previous six months and that there is a report available to prove that.

"Mr Kernan, an experienced construction worker, accepted that he did not fully screw in the pin on the shackle as he should have done and as a result it failed.

"Lifting accessories are not complex items but if they are not used properly or are not thoroughly examined periodically then the consequences can be serious. The practice known as 'backing off', unwinding the pin by a quarter of a turn, is not safe and shouldn't be used."

(LM)