Prison sentences' round up

摘要

In this feature, we look at six recent prosecutions that resulted in courts imposing custodial sentences, all but one of which were suspended. The offenders were all self-employed, sole traders or directors and owners of micro companies. Three of the six cases involved construction work (falling loads, an exploding petrol tank and work at height). Of the final three, two involved gas safety and one followed a workplace transport incident at a waste and recycling site. Three cases resulted in serious injuries. None of the offenders and their companies had been the subject of a HSE prosecution in the previous 10 years or an enforcement notice in the previous five years. There are no publicly available turnover and profit or loss figures for any of the offenders' companies. In our first case, a construction company director was imprisoned for 20 weeks, suspended for 12 months, after a stack of plasterboards fell onto a sub-contractor, causing serious injures. The incident occurred on 12 April 2019 during the refurbishment of a house in Thames Ditton, Surrey by SS Reforms. Sub-contractors were moving plasterboard sheets, each of which weighed 32kg, from the ground to the second floor. There was no staircase, so the workers were stacking the sheets against an unsecured ladder and sliding them up to the floor above. During the process the plasterboards fell onto a worker, fracturing his pelvis.