Fragile roof safety: firm with a risk assessment fined £20,000 after a worker fell 10m through a barn roof

AJ Riley Landscapes and Building Limited had a risk assessment for the job. Its workers hadn’t been trained well enough to use the control measures it named. On 24 February 2025 one of them, Josh Huddleston, 47, fell about 10 metres through a fragile barn roof while replacing a damaged skylight. He suffered fractures to his ribs, vertebrae and pelvis.

If you ever send someone up to fix a skylight, even though roofs aren’t your trade, this is part of running the business with staff.

Warrington Magistrates’ Court fined the Caton, Lancashire business £20,000 on 3 November 2026, plus £4,955 in costs, after it pleaded guilty to breaching Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) brought the case and reported it on 5 November 2026. Nothing new has come into force: HSE’s guidance already says work at height must be properly planned, supervised and carried out by competent people. The fragile roof safety lesson is about using duties you already have.

HSE’s investigation found the business had failed to adequately plan the work and to ensure appropriate control measures were in place to stop Mr Huddleston falling through the fragile roof. HSE hasn’t said what kit was on that roof, or what was missing.

A risk assessment isn’t enough if nobody is trained to use it

The investigation also found that workers had not received sufficient training to be competent in the control measures identified in the company’s risk assessment. That’s the part most owners will recognise. The assessment is written, filed and signed, and it feels like cover.

So look at your own paperwork. If the risk assessment for a roof job names a precaution, could the person going up actually put it in place without you there? If not, that’s a gap in your health and safety training, and the paperwork won’t close it.

Fragile roof safety starts on the ground

The duty is simple to state: the precautions for a fragile roof have to be in place before anyone steps onto it, and the people using them have to know how. Writing the precautions down only covers the first half.

You don’t have to be a roofer for this to be your problem. HSE’s roof-work guidance covers repair, maintenance and cleaning as well as new buildings and demolition. It names building maintenance staff and surveyors among the people who fall from or through roofs. HSE calls AJ Riley a construction and landscaping company, and swapping one rooflight on a barn was enough. Jobs outside your usual work need the same planning, as the lifting operations planning fine for a business that took over unloading showed.

HSE inspector Matthew Shepherd said: “Suitable precautions are readily available, and this incident could have been prevented through proper planning, risk assessment and the implementation of effective control measures.”

Next time someone goes up on a roof for you, ask them to show you, on the ground, how they’d use each precaution your risk assessment lists. That check is the bit AJ Riley’s paperwork couldn’t do for it.