On Tuesday 16 July 2024, a 65-year-old bricklayer was helping install new steps at a domestic property on Binswood Avenue in Leamington Spa. The day before, the old railings had been removed to allow the old steps to be taken out, leaving an unguarded gap in the balustrade. No scaffold or barrier was put across the opening. He fell through it into a basement lightwell approximately 2.6 metres below.
His injuries were life-changing: head trauma and a stroke, leaving him with mobility problems, difficulty writing and holding objects, and speech and memory impairment. The HSE investigation found the contractor, Sibbasbridge Limited, had failed to plan the work properly, had not produced a task-specific risk assessment or method statement, and had not ensured scaffolding or other protection was in place before the work began. The company pleaded guilty to breaching Regulation 6(3) of the Work at Height Regulations 2005 and was fined £16,000 with £7,638 costs at Birmingham Magistrates’ Court on 29 June 2026.
The gap between Monday and Tuesday
This is not a case about someone doing something obviously dangerous. It is a case about a twenty-four hour window that nobody planned for. The railings had to come out — you cannot replace the steps otherwise. The failure was that removing them created a fall risk that then sat there, unprotected, overnight.
That specific question — if we take this out today, what stops someone falling through it tomorrow — is exactly what writing a method statement forces you to ask. Not because a document is magic, but because someone has to sit down for twenty minutes and think the sequence through before anyone picks up a grinder.
Why small firms skip it
Most small residential contractors treat RAMS as something demanded by main contractors on commercial sites. On a two-week job replacing steps at a private house, there is no client asking for it and no one checking, so it does not get written.
The regulations do not work that way. The duty to plan the work sensibly attaches to the work, not to the size of the client. And the practical reality is that the small jobs are where the least planning happens and where people are working alone with nobody watching.
- One page per genuinely hazardous activity is usually enough
- Describe the actual sequence, including what happens at the end of each day
- Name who is responsible for reinstating protection, not just erecting it
- Revisit it when the sequence changes, which on small jobs it always does
Where we fit — and where we do not
We are not structural engineers or scaffold inspectors, and a RAMS review from us is not a substitute for a specialist design where one is needed. We will say so plainly when a job needs an engineer, a scaffold designer or an inspection by someone with a specific ticket.
What we can do is read what you have written, or help you write it, and tell you whether it describes the job you are actually going to do. That includes the boring but decisive detail — what protects the opening overnight, who reinstates it, what happens if the delivery slips. It is experience applied to a document, and to the site the document is supposed to describe.
It protects the builder too
A realistic, proportionate RAMS is the clearest evidence a contractor has that the work was planned. If an inspector calls, if a client disputes something, or if something goes wrong despite everyone's best efforts, the difference between having that document and not having it is very large.
Case details verified against the public HSE prosecution record on 31 August 2026: HSE press release, 30 June 2026.
Sources and further reading
The facts in this article are taken from HSE's published prosecution reporting, which names the parties involved. We have not reviewed the case files ourselves.
This article is general guidance, not advice about your particular site or premises. If you want it applied to your own job, the first call is free.