CONSTRUCTION firms in Merseyside are putting their employees and their businesses at risk by failing to adhere to health and safety practices, according to a personal injury specialist at a Liverpool law firm.
The warning comes after a report revealed that almost a quarter of construction sites in the Merseyside area had failed safety tests.
A total of 21 sites out of 88 failed their inspections during the first two days of a month-long crackdown by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).
Several of the sites received multiple enforcement notices, either stopping work immediately or requiring improvements to be made, with inspectors issuing 22 prohibition and 21 improvement notices.
Jeremy Bradshaw, associate in the personal injury department at law firm Mace & Jones, said: “This crackdown should serve as a damning warning to construction firms that they will not get away with shoddy practice and base negligence.
“Fines can range from a couple of thousand to hundreds of thousands of pounds for negligent firms, which could risk putting them out of business.
“Prohibition notices which stop work immediately can also lead to construction firms losing large amounts of money needlessly if a project is delayed.”
Mr Bradshaw said a comprehensive risk assessment must be carried out and repeated at each phase of the construction work. He added: “The safety rules should be clear and known to all.
“Merseyside is probably no different to any other area and so if these new results from the HSE are mirrored nationally, then up to half a million construction employees are at risk of working on sites that do not comply to appropriate safety standards.”
Mr Bradshaw said that with the downturn in “new builds”, much more of the construction industries’ time and effort was concerned with refurbishment and repair.
This was reflected in the fact that half of the deaths in the year up to March 2011 were in this sector of the industry.
He said: “The onus is on the managers to ensure that the safety of their workers is paramount, as construction sites pose specific risks to workers.
“It is of particular concern that a substantial number of the improvement notices in the recent inspections related to unsafe working at height. The HSE has over the years run publicity campaigns about the dangers of working at height, yet these warnings appear not to have been heeded.”
