ATC (Lasham) Ltd. (a Hampshire-based aircraft maintenance company) has been sentenced for safety failures after three workers were injured in separate falls at its airfield in Lasham – two in the same month.
The company was fined a total of £35,000 and ordered to pay £32,430 in costs after admitting three breaches of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974.
The first incident saw an employee fall five metres from an aircraft door to the runway tarmac while repairing a faulty door. He suffered a broken right thigh and ankle and needed rods and pins inserting to help him recover.
Less than three weeks later, a contractor broke a knee after falling three metres, when a weld gave way on a scissor lift. The third employee fell from an aircraft stand that had no guardrail between the aircraft and the stand steps. He fractured a thumb in three places.
The court heard that the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) identified that in all three incidents ATC had failed to provide safe plant and a safe system of work for the three men. There was a lack of safe procedures for working at height, provision of unsuitable and unmaintained equipment, and general poor management.
After the incidents, HSE had served a number of prohibition notices halting certain areas of work and improvement notices requiring better working practices.
Read more in the HSE Press Release