Ask Scaffolding fined £16,000 after trainee scaffolder’s fatal fall
Ask Scaffolding Ltd admitted a work-at-height offence after Michael Swales died in a five-metre fall. HSE found no safe zones, no harness or lanyard use and evidence of unsafe practices beyond the fatal incident.
Ask Scaffolding Ltd was fined £16,000 at Leeds Magistrates’ Court on 4 November 2026 following the death of trainee scaffolder Michael Swales. The company pleaded guilty to breaching regulation 4(1)(c) of the Work at Height Regulations 2005. It was also ordered to pay £8,000 in costs and a £2,000 victim surcharge. HSE published the prosecution outcome on 6 November. The fatal incident happened on 5 July 2023, so the case concerns a sentencing outcome more than three years after the death rather than an incident occurring during the publication week.
Mr Swales was working for Ask Scaffolding on a residential development near Ripon in North Yorkshire. The company had been contracted to provide scaffolding services. He and a colleague were erecting scaffolding at the front of a two-storey house under construction when he fell five metres after standing on an unsecured scaffolding board. Emergency services attended, but he died at the scene. The HSE account identifies him as a trainee; it does not give his age, the length of his employment or a detailed training history, and those facts should not be invented.