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Shortly after a similar Court conviction in Middlesborough which resulted in a £660,000 penalty, British Telecom (BT) found themselves before the courts again, this time appearing at London’s Old Bailey where the Communications giant were made to pay fines and costs of just under £600,000 on this occasion after an engineer and CWU member David Spurgeon fell seven metres from a loft in a London residential block of flats , breaking his back and his ankles.
 The Old Bailey heard how BT engineer Dave Spurgeon, was fixing a telephone fault in the roof void of a residential block of flats in Tower Hamlets, East London. Mr Spurgeon was working alone when he lost his balance and fell through the ceiling, landing on a concrete stairwell, sustaining his serious injuries.
An investigation by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) into the incident which occurred in May 2011 found there were a number of management failures by BT, including inadequate planning of work taking place near fragile surfaces and failure to assess the risks fully and check that work was being carried out safely.
British Telecom was found guilty of breaching Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and was fined £500,000 and ordered to pay costs of £98,913.51p.
In his sentencing remarks the judge criticised BT for attempting to blame its own engineers for the incident rather than accept their responsibility. In a highly critical summing up the Judge described BT’s approach as being ‘not necessary, misplaced, and unfortunate’.
Both HSE inspector Kevin Smith and CWU National Health and Safety Officer Dave Joyce agreed that “David Spurgeon is lucky to be alive.”
The HSE investigation found there were a number of failures of health and safety management by BT which related to planning the work, supervision, and checking it was being carried out safely. Work at height needs to be properly planned, and this incident could have been prevented.
Communication Workers Union National Health and Safety Officer Dave Joyce said:
"These two recent cases should be a wake up call for British Telecom because next time it could be a fatality and I think the Courts with their new recently, substantially increased sentencing powers may be indeed to hand down a much heavier sentence should this happen again. I’m sure BT, as the CWU does not want to see that.
This is damning example of what can happen when employers fail in their duty of care to manage and monitor the health and safety of the workforce effectively. The Judge criticised BT for trying to blame victim in this case and I think they should reflect carefully on his words. Accident victims should be supported and not have salt rubbed in their wounds.
I would also pay tribute to our local CWU Safety Rep Steve Ensom, for his diligent work in trying to get BT and our members to avoid these accidents. The CWU is keen to work with BT at all levels to make necessary improvements and is discussing with BT how to learn from this accident and put in place an action plan to ensure this type of accident does not happen again.”
Source: Dave Joyce
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