UK Construction and Law
A scaffolding company is fined £16,000 after a trainee scaffolder fell five metres to his death near Ripon
By Staff Writer | 8 November 2026
Ask Scaffolding Ltd pleaded guilty to breaching the Work at Height Regulations 2005 after Michael Swales fell from a partially erected scaffold on a housing development in North Yorkshire in July 2023. Leeds Magistrates' Court fined the company £16,000 on 4 November 2026.
On 5 July 2023 Michael Swales was working for Ask Scaffolding Ltd, which had been engaged to provide scaffolding on a residential development near Ripon. He and a colleague were erecting scaffolding at the front of a two-storey house under construction when he stood on a scaffolding board that had not been secured and fell five metres. The measures in place to prevent a fall, or to limit its effect, were inadequate. Emergency services attended, but Mr Swales died at the scene.
What the investigation found
The Health and Safety Executive found that the company had failed to ensure that work at height was carried out safely, so far as was reasonably practicable. The scaffolding work under way that day did not follow industry guidance. No safe zones had been set up, and neither Mr Swales nor his colleague was wearing a harness or lanyard. The investigation went further back than the day itself. Earlier scaffolding work had also departed from the guidance, and an inspection after the accident found guardrails missing in places where they should have been fitted. Several witnesses said that the company's operatives regularly erected scaffolding without following the guidance.
The industry guidance treats collective protection, in the form of a scaffolder's safe zone, as the primary means of preventing falls, with a harness and lanyard where a scaffolder works outside one.
Ask Scaffolding Ltd, of Thornton Road Industrial Estate, Pickering, pleaded guilty to breaching Regulation 4(1)(c) of the Work at Height Regulations 2005. At Leeds Magistrates' Court on 4 November 2026 it was fined £16,000 and ordered to pay £8,000 in costs and a victim surcharge of £2,000.
This tragic accident underlines the importance of those in control of scaffolding work making sure that it is being done safely and in accordance with industry guidance, and the potential consequences where this is not done.
David Beaton, HSE Inspector
Guidance and practice
HSE points those who employ scaffolders, and the contractors who engage them, to its published guidance on erecting, altering and dismantling scaffolds safely. Mr Beaton said HSE's thoughts remained with Mr Swales's family and friends. The prosecution was brought by HSE enforcement lawyer Iain Jordan and paralegal officer Zara Salman.
The prosecution did not rest on a single bad day. Witness evidence that the company's scaffolders routinely worked without the safe zone method, and missing guardrails on earlier work, showed a gap between the written method and site practice that had lasted for some time before Mr Swales fell. Housebuilders and principal contractors who appoint scaffolding firms can check for that gap on their own sites, by looking at how scaffolds are actually being erected rather than relying on the method statement alone.