A YOUNG joiner has told a jury he was asked to work on a bathroom conversion alone without specific safety training before a pensioner's fatal fall.

Matthew Hobson, now 24, alleged he had never been in charge of any project for his employers, York builders Cooper & Westgate, had never worked without supervision before, and was not given any safety instructions for the job at a pensioner’s house in Whitestone Drive, Huntington.

The jury heard that after he left for the weekend, the householder, Kenneth Armitage, 81, fell 2.5 metres to his death through a hole the joiner had created in the floor of the first floor bathroom.

Mr Hobson said: “I hadn’t done anything different to what I have seen or done in the past.”

He said he had not been provided with any safety equipment to form a barricade round the hole. Instead, he had left a cordon of work items round the hole to protect it and told Mr Armitage about it.

In cross-examination he said he didn't tell his superiors about the hole because "I didn't see it as an issue that needed reporting". 

Cooper & Westgate, of James Nicholson Link, Clifton Moor, denies two health and safety breaches relating to not ensuring the safety of employees and non-employees.

Mr Hobson, who still works for the builders, gave evidence at Leeds Crown Court for the Health and Safety Executive which has brought the prosecution.

He said he joined the firm from school aged 15 and qualified as a joiner after a three-year apprenticeship in 2018.

He alleged the only health and safety training he had received was in the first module of his York College apprentice course. He had received none from the company and none on working at height, he alleged.

In February 2019, he was given an envelope containing the specifications of a bathroom conversion to a wet room at Mr Armitage’s house and told he would be working there alone for the first day. He said he was not given safety advice or details of how to do the work.

He had never worked on his own before, had never had responsibility for running a site and although he had not had specific training on wet room jobs, had worked alongside others from the company on such jobs.

In cross-examination he accepted part of an apprenticeship was watching how others did work.

In evidence in chief, he said that he bent a pipe when he tried to move the cast iron bath on his own and removed four floorboards so that he could access pipework beneath, and make the plumbing watertight by putting a stop end in place.

The water was off while he worked and he wanted to turn it back on so that Mr Armitage could use the bathroom’s basin and toilet after he left.

The trial continues.