ennel You asked if there had been a fatality what would your legal liability be as the person who engaged the contractor? Well strictly speaking it was the Church who engaged the contractor - you were merely the agent of the Church. Therefore any criminal liability would rest with the most senior person(s) within that Church. Under the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2007, the Client must check the competence and resources of all appointees - contractors in this instance. The Church is the client of course. I would not expect a layperson to have an in-depth knowledge of construction issues and nor would the authorities. That said, identifying someone carrying out a hazardous act does not always require an expert knowledge in that particular field. Notwithstanding that, identifying how the contractor intended to carry out the work in the first instance would have been a precursor to assessing whether the contractor was competent and had the right equipment for the job. If I was engaged to advise a minor project like you describe - I would advise on making reasonable checks as to the competence of the contractor - for example, are they affiliated to any bonifide organisation, PLI and a method statement detailing how the work would be carried out safely. The latter being particularly relevant where there may be high risk activities such as working at height. As a Client you are not expected to supervise contractors which you have appointed. If as a result of their own foolhardy actions they have a serious accident - it is their own fault. If you have made resonable checks as to their competence - so much the better. Ray

Thanks rayrapp and carlt for your very prompt responses. With hindsight we obviously fell short somewhere in the process of assessing the contractor’s competence. It would seem that relying on the recommendations of the bursar of a local school, and accepting the claims on the contractor’s website of work done in a local university and local hospitals (where we would have expected safety compliance was a pre-requisite) were not enough to guarantee his understanding of safe site working, and this is something we’ll have to take on board in future. Perhaps warning bells should have rung when the contractors we didn’t employ referred in their quotes to Risk Assessments, method statements and CHAS accreditation, whilst ‘our man’ made no mention of them – and the words ‘safe’ and ‘safety’ do not appear anywhere on his website. Thanks again. ennel