Reading Magistrates’ Court heard that the householder who hired Able Building & Roofing Services Ltd was so concerned by the obvious dangers faced by the workers that he took photos and sent them to the HSE.

The photographs showed workers using an unguarded ladder platform that had not been erected properly, and also working on top of the main roof without any means of preventing falls.

HSE told the court that the company had failed to plan the work at height leaving their workers without adequate protection against falls of up to six metres.

Able Building and Roofing Services of Finchampstead, near Wokingham, was fined a total of £10,000 and ordered to pay £986 in costs after pleading guilty to two safety breaches.

After the hearing, HSE Inspector Dominic Goacher said: “The company put the lives of three of their workers at risk by carrying out the roofing job in a totally unsafe manner.

“Anyone falling from the roof of a two-storey house would likely be killed and that type of disregard for safety is totally unacceptable.

“Able Building and Roofing failed to follow basic, and well-known, safety precautions and heed the guidance available to roofing companies.

“If the work had been planned correctly, more suitable equipment, such as a scaffold, and effective fall protection measures would have been in place.

“Where practical when working on roofs, there should be fully-guarded platforms or good edge protection in place to stop falls happening.”