Private School Fined Over Pool Fall

27 July 2011, 11:51 | Updated: 27 July 2011, 11:57

A private school's been fined £6000 after a 19 year old swimming pool attendant fell from a loft into the changing rooms below.

Stacey Paine and the swimming pool manager were retrieving paperwork from a loft above the Kimbolton School changing rooms near Huntingdon.

To reach the documents she walked along a beam of the unboarded loft but lost her footing. She fell two and a half metres on to the tiled floor below narrowly missing a benched area.

Stacey, from St Neots, suffered a fractured wrist in the fall on 20 April 2010.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) prosecuting told Huntingdon Magistrates Court on Tuesday 26 July 2011 that Kimbolton School had not carried out a risk assessment for entering the loft and failed to ensure that its staff did not work on or near a fragile surface.

After the hearing, HSE Inspector Stephen Faulkner said: "The outcome of this incident could have been very different. Falling from height, particularly onto such a hard surface often results in severe injuries or even death. It is an employer's duty to ensure the safety of all staff and anyone working at height needs to be protected.

"In this case, the documents could have been stored somewhere easier to reach and if a simple risk assessment had been carried out, this would have been identified. I urge any organisation to consider where they store items including paperwork and how safe it is for an employee to access"

Kimbolton School pleaded guilty to breaching Regulation 9(1) of the Work at Height Regulations 2005 and was fined £6,000 and ordered to pay costs of £2,276.40.