Video captures the scene as a 30ft mobile scaffolding tower came crashing down in a high street, narrowly missing cars.

Last Sunday shop owners and traders in a Winchester High Street dashed to move their cars from the path of a collapsing aluminium mobile tower scaffold.

Three dosey contractors who had been clearing out gutters on a shop reportedly proceeded to move the 30ft tower from one side to the other without dismantling it.

Luckily nobody was hurt in the incident.

A spokesperson for the industry trade body for the safe use of mobile access (PASMA) said:

“Given the many fundamental errors in the construction, use and movement of the tower evident in this video, it was almost inevitable that it would overturn. To assemble a narrow width tower to that height without stabilisers or tying in is quite simply dicing with death. To then even countenance moving it, is foolhardy beyond belief. We are relieved that there were no injuries or fatalities as a result of this incident. It could so easily have been the case.

It is very frustrating that it could so easily have been avoided – by assembling the tower following the instruction manual, installing stabilisers, and reducing the height of the tower to 2m (4m if stabilisers are fitted) before attempting to move it.

Mobile access towers are a very safe, efficient and convenient method of working at height but like anything else in the hands of inexperienced or untrained people, they have the potential to be lethal. That’s why PASMA shouts from the rooftops that mobile access towers must be used only by competent people, following the manufacturers’ instruction manual and the PASMA Code of Practice.

PASMA training members deliver its Towers for Users training course through a network of over 470 training centres to equip tower users with the necessary skills and knowledge to avoid just such incidents.”