Firm fined £50,000 over worker's fatal fall

A construction company has been fined £50,000 over the death of a worker who fell from scaffolding at a building site in south-west London.

Antonio Rodrigues, 55, fell through an unglazed window at the site on New Malden High Street on 27 July 2022.

At Westminster Magistrates' Court on 18 June, Lima Construction Limited, based in New Malden, pleaded guilty to breaching construction regulations. The company also paid costs of £11,347.

Health and Safety Executive (HSE) inspector Andrew Verrall-Withers said: "This is a case where a company which generally tried to maintain good standards of health and safety failed to respond effectively to an unusual situation, with tragic consequences."

Rodrigues had been working for Lima Construction as a principal contractor on the redevelopment of a former department store, which was being converted into a mix of commercial and residential units.

He fell from external scaffolding through a window void, landing on a concrete floor more than three metres below.

Rodrigues died in hospital days later.

Window openings had been created in one of the building's walls to install Juliet doors, but the doors were delivered damaged and were not fitted.

Lima Construction identified that the four window voids posed a risk to those working on the scaffolding platform.

However, protective boarding was only installed after Rodrigues had fallen.

The HSE said it was "reasonably practicable" to have installed boarding or scaffolding rails to prevent an accident.

The company also failed to ensure that legally required weekly scaffolding inspections were carried out after 5 July 2022.

Verrall-Withers added: "As there was no CCTV and nobody witnessed the incident, we will never know exactly what caused Mr Rodrigues to fall.

"But if the boards added shortly afterwards had been in place, there would have been no opening for him to fall through in the first place."

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