A health and safety inspector shut down a dangerous building site after an accident left a worker with permanent disabilities, a jury heard today.
Christopher Smith also issued a prohibition notice banning any further work on the site to Shah Nawaz Pola who is accused of being in overall charge.
Dusan Dudi, a Slovakian worker, was rushed to hospital when he was hit on the head by a falling concrete lintel while demolishing a wall from a temporary platform in November 2005.
His injuries were thought to be non-survivable but when his life support machine was switched off he carried on breathing against all the odds.
Pola is accused of breaching the Health and Safety Act but has denied he was responsible for the workers.
Mr Smith told a jury at Bradford Crown Court that he visited the site on Allerton Road shortly after the accident and noticed that safety conditions were substandard.
He said: "As soon as I approached the site I could see that there were substantial breaches (of the Health and Safety Act). Immediately I recognised that it was a dangerous site.
"I made the decision straightaway that the site had to be closed down."
The court was told that Mr Smith then issued the prohibition notice to Pola as he was being spoken to by officers at a police station.
That meant that no further work could be done on the site until the problems had been remedied and, when he was later telephoned by Pola, Mr Smith suggested that he employed a contractor to take over the running of the project.
He told the jury: "It was my opinion that Mr Pola did not have sufficient knowledge to run a site and so I was trying to persuade him to bring in a principal contractor.
"I formed the opinion that the site was unsafe because nobody was there to direct the workers in a safe manner."
One of the problems surrounded the scaffolding on the site but, under cross-examination form Pola's barrister Paul Greaney, Mr Smith agreed that from photographs taken three months after the accident significant improvements had been made in that department.
The defendant has denied breaching that prohibition order as well as a subsequent order made in February.
Pola, of Springcliffe Street, Heaton, gave a witness statement in the hours after the accident in which he said that he was in "overall charge of the project". He told officers that he had bought the house for his nephew and was making alterations to an extension at the side of the house.
Pola added that he had employed a builder Sajad Shah to oversee the construction work but said that he would visit the site on a daily basis.
The court was told that Pola was "shocked" when he found out about the accident and had called an ambulance after he was telephoned by one of the other migrant workers.
The trial continues.
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