A popular leisure facility in Northern England has been fined after staff were exposed to asbestos after management tasked them with removing asbestos-containing material rather than employing the services of a professional.
The incident took place at Whitley Bay Ice Rink in Tyneside, where the management has been accused of doing “a home DIY job rather than a professional job.”
The company was allegedly unaware of any asbestos at the site. It failed to carry out any type of asbestos surveys on the building despite being more than seventy years old.
Two staff proceeded to use angle grinders and hammers to remove pipework and lagging, and transported it outside to a skip bin in wheelbarrows, all while not wearing any protective equipment.
North Tyneside Magistrates’ Court heard that the two workers were definitely exposed to the asbestos, and members of the public may also have been exposed.
Durham Ice and Sports Stadium Ltd, owners of the facility, have been fined more than £20,000 (AUD 36,590) and ordered to pay more than £5,000 (AUD 9,147) in costs after pleading guilty to two counts of breaching the Health and Safety at Work Act.
Sentencing the company, chairing magistrate, John Doyle, said, “We consider the company concerned as a long-established business, which appears not to have moved with the times and adopted a complacent attitude to management and the need to adapt.”
Peter Rowbottom, prosecuting on behalf of North Tyneside Council, explained that “The company had no plan on how to go about these works and it was very ad hoc and, in doing so, they exposed those two staff to the dangers of asbestos.”
Reading from one of the worker’s statements, Mr Robottom continued: “We stripped it all off with our hands and a claw hammer and chisels. There was also a section we used a cordless battery hand grinder to remove the lagging. We used a grinder for 2.5 hours.”
The asbestos was uncovered after an NHS estate officer, who was friends with one of the workers, identified the material in the skip bin as potentially asbestos-containing.
Mr Rowbottom said the company showed “willful blindness” to the risks posed by undertaking the work, stating: “It was more like a DIY project you would do at home, rather than by a professional company”.