Taylor Wimpey has been fined £800,000 after an apprentice less than 12 months into his career was injured when a temporary stairwell covering collapsed.
Charlie Marsh, 17, from Whitchurch in Bristol, had been working as a contractor on a Taylor Wimpey project to build 450 new homes in Meadfields, Weston-super-Mare.
On 22 August 2023, Marsh was loading concrete blocks onto the temporary flooring on the first floor of one of the newly built homes.
The blocks were being loaded into stacks of between 10 and 20, one of which was on or near a temporary stairwell covered with a timber sheet material laid over joists.
The area collapsed, causing Marsh and around 20kg of the concrete blocks to fall more than two metres to the ground below. He sustained injuries to his fingers, hand, wrist and shoulder.
‘Lessons should be learned’
A Health and Safety Executive (HSE) investigation found that the joists under the timber sheet material should have been back propped.
Although mentioned several times in Taylor Wimpey’s own health and safety manual for the site, this had been missed on this particular plot.
The HSE said that, had suitably designed back propping been used, it is unlikely the incident would have occurred.
Taylor Wimpey UK Ltd pleaded guilty to breaching section 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. It was fined £800,000 and ordered to pay £6,240.25 costs with a £2,000 victim surcharge at North Somerset Magistrates’ Court on 3 June 2025.
HSE inspector Derek Mclauchlan said: “The failures of Taylor Wimpey resulted in a young man at the very beginning of his career being injured. Charlie was lucky those injuries were not far more serious.
“Lessons should be learned.”
I always require void infills to be clearly identified with markings to indicate ‘Void Below’ so as to eliminate the possibility of anything being stored upon it in the first place as I’ve heard too many stories of operatives picking up pieces of ply / OSB from the floor, thinking they have just been discarded, and walking forward not realising the board was covering a hole!!!