Companies fined

Serco Ltd and Birse Civils Ltd have been fined £300,000 after a Serco engineer fell 16 ft from a wall while repairing CCTV cameras used to monitor a lane of the M5 Motorway.

During the hearing, the court head that Serco Ltd did not plan, manage or monitor the work properly which meant that their engineer was not warned about the drop.  Both companies also failed to cooperate with each other to make sure workers at the site were not put in danger.

Serco pleaded guilty to breaching Regulation 4(1) Work at Height Regulations and Regulation 11 (i)(a) Management of Health & Safety at Work Regulations and was fined a total of £200,000 and ordered to pay costs of £36,186. 

Birse Civils pleaded guilty to breaching Regulation 11(i)(a) Management of Health & Safety at Work and was fined £100,000 with costs of £180,093

The case took five and a half years to get to court as the original Police investigation looked at possible manslaughter charges. Three Serco employees were arrested during the investigation, although no charges were brought.