A South-West landscaping company has been fined $175,000 (and ordered to pay $6000 in costs) over an incident in which a worker was seriously injured.
SJK Landscaping Pty Ltd pleaded guilty to failing to provide and maintain a safe workplace and, by that failure, causing serious harm to a worker, and was fined in the Bunbury Magistrates Court last week.
In July 2022, two employees of SJK were sent to the Treehouse Child Care Centre in Donnybrook to clean the gutters and perform some other gardening services at the centre.
One of the workers commenced cleaning the gutters by leaning a ladder against the building and removing the leaf litter by hand, then moving the ladder along to clean the next part of the gutter.
The roof was mainly corrugated iron, but there was also a section of flat roof made of plastic sheeting covering a brick-paved courtyard. The worker could not access part of the gutter between the two parts of the roof to remove the litter.
He made the decision to climb up and walk across the flat roof, planning to only step on the beams supporting that roof. As he walked across, the roof collapsed under his weight and he fell through it, falling approximately 2.5 metres.
The worker suffered a skull fracture and multiple spinal fractures resulting in a damaged spinal cord with paraplegia from the waist down.
WorkSafe Commissioner Sally North said the case was a tragic reminder of the importance of having strong procedures in place to reduce or eliminate the risk of falls from height.
“The court was told the employer would have been aware of the risk of falls involved in the tasks of cleaning gutters and accessing roofs,” Ms North said.
“The employer could have provided workers with equipment or tools that would have allowed them to clean gutters without climbing onto roofs.
“The workers were not given any instruction or information on the risks of the plastic sheets on the flat roof, despite the fact that the employer was aware of this from previous work done at the centre.
“In addition, no formal induction or training was given to SJK’s workers on cleaning gutters or working at heights in general. The injured worker was instead shown how to clean gutters by getting on a roof with a blower vacuum, and no training was given to the other worker.
“SJK could have established, maintained and enforced a safe system of work for gutter cleaning or working at heights generally via documented risk assessments, policies or standard operating procedures.
“Comprehensive information and training on working at heights is available by way of training courses and online resources, and this could have been utilised to keep these workers safe.
“Western Australia has had a Code of Practice for the Prevention of Falls at Workplaces since 2004, reissued in 2022. The code provides practical guidance to effectively manage fall risks and should be followed in all workplaces where a risk of falls exists.
“This incident is a timely reminder that it is the duty of anyone in charge of a workplace to eliminate the risk of falls where they can, or otherwise to use the code of practice to conduct a thorough risk assessment before work begins and to put safe work procedures in place to reduce the risk of injury to workers and others.”
A Health and Safety Bulletin published in December 2024 in relation to falls through fragile roofs and roof openings is available on WorkSafe’s website.