Opening the gate to injury and prosecution

A small business in New South Wales has been fined $180,000 in relation to an incident at the worksite entrance where a newly installed 200-kilogram sliding gate fell onto a woman and her three children (SafeWork NSW v 465 Leichardt Pty Ltd [2025]).

The business, a husband-and-wife company, was engaged by a principal contractor to undertake demolition works and some construction at a redevelopment site in Leichardt, New South Wales.

The business engaged a subcontractor to manufacture and install a gate across the driveway entrance to the site. The gate was 2.4 metres high and 5 metres wide, made of steel tubing and weighed approximately 200 kilograms. The gate could only be opened and closed manually by rolling it sideways along the building side of the footpath, guided by two rollers on a metal track. However, the rollers were loose, and the track was poorly secured to the uneven ground. Importantly, there was an installation defect in that the stopper mechanism preventing the gate from moving along and eventually overrunning the track had not been installed by the subcontractor.

On the date of the incident in September 2022, a scaffold worker had parked his vehicle across the footpath in front of the gate. A woman and her children were walking along the road but had to stop after noticing their path was blocked by the vehicle. The scaffold worker pushed the gate open to enable him to move his vehicle inside the site and allow the pedestrians to pass. However, when he pushed the gate, it overran the supporting track and fell onto the pedestrians, trapping them and causing injuries.

The business pleaded guilty to failing to discharge its principal duty, which was to inspect the gate after installation to identify any hazards, in this case an obvious risk caused by the failure to install the stopper. There was also considerable guidance material available to the business, which should have alerted it to the dangers of heavy, manually operated sliding gates, including codes of practice and Australian Standards.

The business was fined $180,000, after a 25% discount for the guilty plea, and ordered to pay the prosecutor’s costs of about $42,000.

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