PPE contributed to Pleasureland worker's death

Prosecutions and Claims |
08.12.2007

An accident in which a maintenance engineer suffocated after his fall-arrest line caught in a fairground ride's mechanism has led to a £145,000 penalty for a subsidiary of the company which owns the Blackpool Pleasure Beach. 

William Birchall was killed on 25 August 2004 as he carried out weekly maintenance checks on the Skyride, a cable ride similar to a ski-lift, at the Pleasureland park in Southport. Birchall was at the top of the ride's 10.7m return tower, lubricating a wheel which carried the cable.

A colleague was at the main controls at the far end of the ride, starting and stopping the mechanism on Birchall's instructions via a two-way radio. While the cable was moving, Birchall's safety line, intended to protect him against a fall, was caught in the return wheel.

"He was getting pulled in and entangled and there was no way he could stop it," explained the HSE's Charles Cottle, who led the investigation into the incident. "He had put his radio down and couldn't reach it. His colleague was 200 metres away and there's no line of sight to the furthest tower." Birchall was caught between the cable and the wheel and suffocated.

Cottle said it was ironic that a piece of safety equipment had been the immediate cause of the engineer's death, but said the fall-arrest arrangements were not adequate.

"They were required to wear safety harnesses and lines," he said, "but there was limited training and no suitable anchor point was provided, so people just anchored where they saw fit."

Cottle said the park's operators had a 10-year-old risk assessment that only covered the safety of passengers and did not mention maintenance. "The company did try quite hard to protect visitors," said Cottle, "but didn't do much to protect employees."

On 27 November at Liverpool Crown Court, Pleasureland was fined £20,000 for breaching Regulation 3(1)(a) of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations by not having an adequate risk assessment for the Skyride's maintenance, plus £75,000 for failing to protect Birchall contrary to Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act.

The judge ordered the firm to pay HSE costs of £50,000. Cottle told HSW the level of costs, and the length of time the case took to come to court, reflected the difficulty the HSE had pinning down the dutyholder, as Pleasureland had ceased trading and sold the site since Birchall's death.