Wakefield roofing company boss given suspended sentence after dad-of-two died in skylight fall

A Yorkshire roofing company boss has been given a suspended prison sentence after a dad-of-two was killed when he fell nearly 40ft through a skylight.

Jonathan May, 39, from Horbury, Wakefield, was working on a storm-damaged warehouse roof at F&G Commercials Limited in Barnsley with two others when he fell on December 18 2016.

Mr May was helping replace more than 300 skylights on a fragile asbestos cement roof which had been damaged in a hailstorm.

An inquest earlier this year heard that the workmen used crawling boards to access the roof and weren’t using harness or ropes as there was no way to connect them to the building.

Safety nets could not be used inside the building due to the racking that reached the top.

The Health & Safety Executive launched an investigation which found Davis Industrial Roofing Limited, the company Mr May was subcontracting for, hadn't carried out correct control measures. The work was poorly supervised and carried out unsafely.

Melvyn Davis, the sole director of the company, had regularly visited to monitor progress but “had failed to provide suitable and sufficient fall protection measures and consented to the use of an unsafe system of work”, the HSE said .

Davis, of Field Place, Wakefield, pleaded guilty to a breach of health and safety at Sheffield Magistrates and was sentenced to eight weeks in jail suspended for 12 months and ordered to do 15 days of rehabilitation activity.

Davis Industrial Roofing Limited pleaded guilty to a breach of health and safety and was fined £20,000 and ordered to pay costs of £12,557.

Speaking afterwards, HSE Inspector Chris Gallagher said: “This incident could so easily have been avoided by simply carrying out correct control measures and safe working practices."