A PARTNER at a Kingswood-based scaffolding firm has pleaded guilty to a health and safety offence which is alleged to have led to the death of one of the company’s employees.
Russell Flook, of Flooks Scaffolding, admitted the health and safety offence at Bristol Crown Court.
The 45-year-old, of Rogers Walk, Bridgeyate, admitted that there was a failure to provide a safe system of work for the firm’s employees while they were working on temporary roofs on October 4, 2006.
The charge included failures to adequately assess the risk of the work and provide adequate training, instruction, supervision and monitoring.
It also included a failure to provide adequate equipment for the work.
The Crown Prosecution Service alleged the failures led to the death of Shaun Stevens, a 41-year-old, married father-of-three, who died 12 days after falling 15ft from a scaffolding structure and hitting his head at the company’s yard in Station Road.
Marcus Tregilgas-Davey, defending, said his client had pleaded guilty on the basis that there was a lack of a written risk assessment, not that “an unsafe method for dismantling the structure was employed”.
He said his client accepted that the safety harnesses being used were inadequate after they had been tested.
Mr Tregilgas-Davey said there was “no causal connection between the breaches and the death”.
He said: “There is a small amount of light between us and where the Crown puts the case.”
The court was told Flook was likely to receive a financial punishment.
Judge Neil Ford asked for further financial information about the firm’s four other partners ahead of sentencing at Bristol Crown Court on April 27.
