In April last year, my constituent Jason Knight was cleaning the final window on the home of a regular customer in Westbury when he was electrocuted by 33,000 volts.
He was blown seven feet across the garden, waking up on a patch of scorched grass with catastrophic injuries. Airlifted to hospital, he awoke from a coma some time later surrounded by his distraught family. He was extremely lucky to survive.
But he was left with life-changing injuries. He has lost his left forearm, several toes, and so much leg musculature that he can hardly walk or stand. He suffered severe burns all over his body and undergone over 20 sets of surgical intervention. And now he is going blind, as a delayed effect of the electrocution.
A 34-year-old man with three small children – a doer who had started his own business that was growing and providing for his young family – may never work again.
What happened: 33,000 volts leapt 2.6 metres from an overhead power cable to Jason’s telescopic water-fed cleaning pole, all without touching it. The Health and Safety Executive made inquiries but concluded that nothing fell short of national safety standards and no further investigation was warranted.
Jason was not safe enough. He was working close to an overhead cable but would have been okay if the pole had been fully insulated. It wasn’t.
As Jason and his father John recounted the story to me, I assumed the water was to blame, since it conducts electricity. But they soon put me right. Window cleaners use pure water – often called zero water. Filtered to remove all or nearly all dissolved solids, it leaves no watermarks on windows after cleaning, unlike ordinary water. The key point is this: pure water does not conduct electricity. It wasn’t the water.
It was the inadequate insulation. Specifically, the pole Jason was using could extend and retract. The handle section at the bottom was insulated. The extended section was not. He was electrocuted when he reached up to retract the extended section. That is no coincidence.
There is an obvious conclusion, isn’t there? Insulate the extended section. That’s it. No new quangos, training courses, or red tape. A simple British Standard for manufacturers to meet.
There is already a convenient standard for this purpose: British Standard 8020, published by the British Standards Institute (BSI) in 2011. It governs the insulation of hand tools used near live electrical conductors up to 1,000 volts. Extend it to telescopic water-fed poles. Require batch testing at a 10:1 safety margin to be sure the insulation can withstand 33,000 volts for a few seconds – enough time for Jason to have dropped the pole. Why not?
Because, according to the minister’s response to my Adjournment Debate speech on this issue, BS 8020 is designed for tools that require training to use, whereas a telescopic water-fed pole does not. But BS 8020 covers narrow-bladed shovels, for example. What training is required to use one of those? Evidently the Standard already covers tools you can buy in a DIY shop, so it can be extended to cover one more.
The minister was right in saying that these poles are not specialist equipment. They are being used not only for cleaning windows but for cleaning solar panels, clearing gutters, treating roofs, even residential streets for putting up Christmas decorations. They are available online, quite cheaply, often imported from China and elsewhere to no enforceable safety standards, for amateurs and DIYers to buy and use. People have already died because of these poles, including two window cleaners in the UK alone in 2022. That is what makes this urgent.
Glass-fibre insulation would make these poles about 70g heavier and very slightly less rigid, but that is a small price to pay for saving limbs, lives, and livelihoods. Added bonus – it is cheaper than the carbon fibre it would replace.
Elements in the industry concerned about maximum lightness and rigidity and government inclination to put responsibility onto the BSI and the victims themselves, are obstacles to change. But the Knight family, longstanding campaigners like Craig Mawlam of Ionic Systems in Swindon who make insulated poles, and I, will be keeping up the pressure.
Raise standards to save window cleaners’ lives
