Camden News: Noel Corbin | Inquest | Belsize Park Gardens

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Camden News - by CHARLOTTE CHAMBERS
Published: 12 March 2009

Noel Corbin

TV engineer fell to his death trying to fit a Sky dish

A TV engineer fell more than 40 feet to his death because he didn’t have a long enough ladder for the job, an inquest has heard.
Noel Corbin died while trying to fix a Sky satellite dish on a fourth-storey roof in Belsize Park Gardens, Belsize Park, in February last year.
A jury at St Pancras Coroner’s Court ruled yesterday (Wednesday) – on what would have been his 31st birthday – that Mr Corbin died as the result of an accident.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has yet to complete its investigation into the incident. Sky and Essex-based sub-contractor Foxtel, Mr Corbin’s employer, have faced questions as part of their inquiry.
During three days of evidence, the court heard how engineers had previously visited the Belsize Park site and marked the job as impossible without a specialist team. Mr Corbin had not received safety training in six years and did not have a ladder long enough to reach the roof. He was not told that another engineer who visited the Edwardian property a year earlier to install the dish had rejected the job as a “code 535” – understood by Sky and its contractors to mean “health and safety, complete impossible”.
Mr Corbin clambered through a roof window and fell 44 feet to his death.
HSE’s safety expert Mark Shearon said Mr Corbin should have refused the job.
“You need to question, can I do the job with the equipment I’ve got in the van?
“The answer is no and you should go away and get it assessed,” he added. Mr Corbin, who lived in Croydon, had a 10-metre ladder that was not long enough to reach the roof of the building, which was 13.5 metres tall.
St Pancras coroner Dr Andrew Reid asked: “Isn’t there a responsibility on the employee? You say you would have walked away?”
Mr Shearon replied: “Yes, but I work for a good employer. I don’t lose a day’s pay [if the job is not completed] and I can still pay my bills. Mr Corbin didn’t have that benefit.”
Dr Reid said he reserved the right to take further action once the HSE had finished its probe.
Mr Corbin’s girlfriend Cherokee Curtis said: “I want the outcome [of Noel’s inquest] to ensure there is some kind of legislation.”
Sky’s safety advisor Anna Singleton told the inquest the company selected contractors by area as “they’ll have a knowledge of what the job might need”.
Foxtel director Richard Smith said he did not realise Mr Corbin had not had safety training for such a lengthy period.
He said: “Waiting for safety certificates can take four to five weeks. We didn’t know when he was taken on [that he wasn’t safety trained] because we didn’t have the certificates.”

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