Two partners from a building firm paid more than £23,000 after a work experience teenager was left with a fractured skull.
 
Peter Swinbourne and Nicholas Rawlins, who trade jointly as Dover Building and Property Maintenance were each fined £10,000 and ordered to pay £1,290 in costs at Folkestone Magistrates Court this week.
 
The company bosses pleaded guilty to health and safety breeches following an incident on 2nd October last year that left a teenager with a fractured skull, a brain haemorrhage, facial and leg injuries and extensive bruising.
 
Martin Sankey, 16, from Dover who was working for the company to gain experience while on a college bricklaying course was on the second floor and blacked out falling through the hole of a lift well that was under construction. He fell almost 5.9 metres to the ground floor.
 
John Underwood, HM Inspector of Health and Safety, said: "This accident was totally preventable in that a very basic timber or scaffold edge protection barrier would have prevented anyone working near the lift well or moving past it from falling."