Warrington Crown Court heard that a caretaker from Accrington who was employed by Bizspace Investments Ltd, fell through a fragile skylight while cleaning guttering on 20 March 2007. The worker suffered several rib fractures and severe bruising.
Bizspace Investments Ltd was fined £5,000 after three workers fell through the skylights at the same industrial unit in Warrington on three separate occasions - leaving one of them paralysed.
On 10 April 2010, a 62-year-old man employed by Massey Roofing and Building Contractors was sent to repair the skylights. As he was fixing a skylight, the employee fell more than four metres to the ground below. He sustained severe spinal injuries, leading to him being paralysed from the waist down.
The owner of the building Bizspace and the employer of the first two men, Anthony Massey, trading as Massey Roofing and Building Contractors, were prosecuted by The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) for putting workers' lives at risk. The HSE is Britain's national regulator for workplace health and safety. It aims to prevent death, injury and ill health.
Martin Heywood, the investigating inspector at HSE, said:
"It is astonishing that virtually the same incident was allowed to happen on three separate occasions. A man was sent onto a roof without safety equipment, despite two caretakers falling through skylights less than a month earlier.
"As a result, the worker is likely to need to use a wheelchair for the rest of his life. If the project had been properly planned, using appropriate equipment for work at height, then all three workers would have remained uninjured.
"More workplace deaths are caused by falls from height than anything else but companies continue to allow workers to balance dangerously on roofs. It is vital lessons are learnt from this tragic case."
Last year, more than 4,000 employees suffered a major injury as a result of a fall from height at work and 15 were killed.