Page 1492 - Xmo Strata - Bulletin Archive

Two-year jail sentence for director follows MEWP

failure fatality
10 January 2017

Donald Craig, who runs Craig Services & Access, has been sentenced to two years’
imprisonment for breaches of health and safety law after his company hired out an
unsafe cherry picker, which buckled while it was in use, causing the death of one
worker and seriously injuring another.

Image credit: ©iStock/AlexLMX

The company was also fined £61,000 for failing to ensure that those using the
equipment were not exposed to the risk of injury or death, for failing to maintain the
equipment and for hiring the cherry picker out when it had not been certified as
safe. Another company, J M Access Solutions, which had been hired to carry out
statutory thorough inspections was also fined £30,000 for failing to do so.

Airdrie Sheriff Court heard that Gary Currie and Alexander Nisbet were working in
the basket of a mobile elevating work platform (MEWP), a cherry picker, at a height
of about 30 m when the collapse happened on 20 July 2012 at Buchanan House, an
office block in Port Dundas Road, in Glasgow. Currie was removing netting from the
building’s facade and Nisbet was operating the platform.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) investigation found that the third main boom

section of the MEWP (known as main boom 3) had buckled, crashing the basket to
the ground, killing Currie and seriously injuring his colleague.

The court heard that the cherry picker was owned by Craig Services and that the
person, who to all intents and purposes was the company’s manager, was Donald
Craig.