GMK Construction, represented by director Greg Kelly, appeared before the Royal Court yesterday after pleading guilty to breaching workplace health and safety laws while fitting a new shopfront at Animal Kingdom in Halkett Place.
During sentencing the court heard how a meeting had taken place between a JEC representative and Mr Kelly before work started to discuss how they could work around the live cable.
The JEC official, it was claimed, told Mr Kelly that he could use hand tools to ascertain the exact position of the cable but had to then contact their engineers and submit a form to have it disconnected or moved.
However, Attorney General Mark Temple, prosecuting, said there was a misunderstanding and the director wrongly thought that work could take place with the live cable in situ as long as only hand tools were used. On 7 May, after a trench had been dug, said Mr Temple, in front of the store, a steel fitter was sub-contracted to construct a ‘spreader beam’ at the site. He claimed that he asked Mr Kelly about the cable and was told that ‘someone at the JEC said it was OK to go ahead with the work’. He assumed it had been disconnected.
But later that day, Mr Temple went on, the same JEC representative who had met Mr Kelly to discuss the job drove past the site and noticed that the project had begun. After stopping and
halting the work, he saw
that large steel rods had been installed around the cable.
He also noted that the cable was of an older type and insulated with paper rather than plastic – making it more likely to crack.
Mr Kelly was subsequently interviewed by the Health and Safety Inspectorate, when he admitted the mistake and said he had misunderstood the JEC representative’s instructions.
Mr Temple then called for the company to be fined £60,000.
Advocate Stephen Wauchope, defending, said GMK was a relatively young company, having been established only in 2016 and was relatively inexperienced in dealing with electrical cables. It was the company’s first offence and a guilty plea was entered at the first opportunity.
Advocate Wauchope added that the company’s culpability was low, as it was not the case that it had contravened a set agreement with the JEC but had instead misunderstood instructions.
Pointing to the impact the pandemic had had on the company’s finances, he then called on the court to impose a fine of between £10,000 and £15,000 – saying that it would ‘still sting’ financially.
Delivering the sentence of the court, Deputy Bailiff Robert MacRae, presiding, said the company had failed to adhere to standard industry guidance and agreed with Mr Temple’s recommendation of a £60,000 fine. But, taking the business’s finances into account, a fine of £30,000 was imposed. The company was also ordered to pay £5,000 prosecution costs.
Jurats Jerry Ramsden and Steven Austin-Vautier were sitting.
