Council fined after putting life at risk

[Pete]

The council has just been fined nearly £20,000 for "putting a tenant at risk of potentially deadly carbon monoxide poisoning" by failing to inform contractors that a house with a gas boiler and a gas fire used an old chimney to get rid of the fumes.

"The authority arranged for the property’s chimney stack to be removed and capped after a roofing contractor advised it was at risk of collapsing. However, the stack contained the flue for a gas fire and boiler.

After it had been removed and capped, carbon monoxide was unable to escape the house – so the dangerous gas fed back into the property. This was only discovered six weeks later when the council carried out an annual gas safety check on the property."

The council, who failed to inform the contractor about the live gas appliances, pleaded guilty to breaching health and safety law and was fined £18,000 and ordered to pay costs of £7,534."

Words fail me… 

[Fly]

Bit of a cock up must agree.
I'm sure the townhall back room boys are working out how to get the monies back as we speak.
Saying that, they've probably already done it. I read this somewhere about a week ago.
Forgot to post about it, sorry peeps 
Funny Slack kept quite about it 

[chesterfieldchris]

POST DELETED AT USER'S REQUEST

[Kent]

SOME BIG QUESTIONS NEED TO BE ASKED about HOW this could HAPPEN.
PROCEDURES, TRAINING, COMMON SENSE..... What's Going on IN THE COUNCIL.
AND SURELY ALARM BELLS SHOULD HAVE RUNG IN THE CONTRACTORS MIND
WHEN THEY SAW THE FLUE.

[chesterfieldchris]

POST DELETED AT USER'S REQUEST

[Kent]

And READING Pete's post, WHAT WORRIES ME EVEN MORE IS THAT NO ONE
BOTHERED TO GO AND INSPECT THE CONTRACTORS WORK, STRAIGHT AFTER
IT HAD BEEN FINISHED.

[Pete]

Maybe its the cuts... Has the relevent department at the council been subject to the current cuts?

[Fly]

True story.
Got home from work one evening to a power cut.
Gave it a few hours before phoning to ask how long we'd be off.  Apparently, there were no power cuts in our area.
"Check the fuse box", like they think they were talking to an idiot. I'd done this 2 hours earlier.

Basically, next door had had a new 'feed' fitted from the street, instead of from their other next door neighbour.
The contractor paid by Bolsover Council had cut the wires between our house and next door.
This cut the lecky supply to our house and our other neighbour.
We didn't get the power back till the next day.
We ran an extension cable from next door to ours so we had a bit of lecky over night.

EoN spent the next week installing separate feeds to most of the houses on the street.

 

[chesterfieldchris]

POST DELETED AT USER'S REQUEST

[Pete]

>> No amount of cuts could result in this.

How so? If they had large caseload and they let some staff go...

Not that Im defending them in any way.

[chesterfieldchris]

POST DELETED AT USER'S REQUEST

[Pete]

Good point, good point...

[Slacker]

Not wishing to defend any individual incidents I can tell you that health and safety procedures have tightened up at CBC in the last year or so. This is not a party political reason it is largely due to Councillor King who was elected in 2011 being a retired senior officer at the HSE now being chair of the heath and safety committee which comprises councillors, managers and union reps.

[Fly]

Bout time he started doing his job then