If your school uses a tallescope or a scaffold tower you should be aware of the following HSE prosecution. Stafford Borough Council was fined after an incident at a theatre in which a worker suffered fractured bones in his back and as a result was unable to bear weight on his right leg for four weeks.
The Court heard that two theatre employees were using a tallescope (a telescopic aluminium manually operated work platform, used for one-person spot access) to undertake high level work to stage curtains and a projector. One of the workers was in the caged working platform at the top of the tallescope, approximately 4.5 metres high, as his colleague manoeuvred it around the stage to relocate it when the apparatus overturned.
The HSE, upon investigation, found that movement of the tallescope with someone in the cage took place on many occasions before this particular incident.
What should you do?
Falls from height remain the most common cause of fatalities at work. Incidents like this can easily be prevented by:
- Carrying out a suitable and sufficient risk assessment of the use of tallescope/ other equipment at the theatre. If this had been in place, the manufacturer’s instructions on a warning label on the apparatus stating it should not be rolled with men or materials on platform would have been highlighted. It is imperative that significant risks are identified and suitable control measures put in place to eliminate or reduce such risks.
- Avoid moving a tallescope with anyone in the cage.
- Select equipment for work at height in school theatres following the hierarchy shown in the Work at Height Regulations 2005. The following, depending on individual circumstances, are examples of reasonably practicable methods for working at height.
- Avoid work at height - E.g. all scenery etc. completed at ground level and lifted into place
- Work from the existing workplace - E.g. the use of existing gantries, walkways, catwalks or trampoline grids
- Work platforms - E.g. the use of mobile towers and MEWPS
- Work positioning- E.g. the use of fixed length wires and harnesses.
- Fall mitigation - E.g. the use of airbags/nets etc. Fall protection using inertia reel harnesses or similar. Rescue plans must be in place
- Other equipment requiring detailed systems of work - E.g. the use of ladders, zarges, tallescopes etc.
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