An employee installing solar panels on a barn in Newton Stewart near Stranraer stepped backwards on to a roof light and fell 3.6m to the ground below – another reminder that if some or all of a roof is weakened for any reason, walkovers can help to prevent those accessing the roof from falling through it.
Roof lights are one of the most common areas of weakness on otherwise stable roofs, and unless the roof light itself is raised or surrounded by guardrails, it can be very easy to take even a small step backwards and find yourself in extreme danger.
In this incident, which occurred on April 25th 2014, no measures were in place to protect the roof lights – such as by using walkovers to safely pass above or around them – and no edge protection was in place on the roof itself either.
The HSE report does not detail if the employee was injured, or how severely, but a fall of almost four metres is clearly something to be avoided if possible, and the electrical services company in charge of the project faces a £10,000 fine as a consequence.