Council fined after worker electrocuted

Prosecutions and Claims |
18.07.2008

Dacorum Borough Council has been fined over the death of an employee who was electrocuted when he mistook an underground electrical cable for a mains water pipe.

In November 2006, 29-year-old Ben Richardson, who worked in Dacorum council's housing repair team, was called to a house in Hemel Hempstead to help council plumbers mend a burst water main.

He clamped what he thought was a domestic water main, but was in fact an electricity cable. The cable ruptured and he received a massive shock.

The cable and the water pipe were of a similar size and colour and were hard to tell apart. The HSE's investigation revealed that the council's system of work did not involve using a cable avoidance tool (CAT) to detect electric current; Richardson's workmate said they had been shown how to use a CAT for about half an hour as part of a training course in 1998, but had never been competent to use them. Instead they would dig a trench and try to identify pipes and cables by sight.

HSE inspector Trevor Morrow told HSP the workers had been using this method for four or five years without their supervisor being aware: "When they saw a water pipe next to an electrical pipe, it was 50/50 whether they were killed that day or another day."

Morrow said there were risk assessments but the most relevant one was badly written, unclear and not really specific to the task. The method statement was in draft form and "never got off the computer".

Dacorum Borough Council admitted breaching Section 2 of the Health and Safety at Work Act for failing to ensure the safety of employees over a period of four years, between February 2002 and November 2006.

On 15 July at St Albans Crown Court the council was fined £37,500 plus £17,500 costs. The judge took into account the guilty plea, the fact it was the council's first time in court, and its ability to pay.