THE Health and Safety Executive has confirmed it is investigating alleged breaches of health and safety regulations after workers were seen working unsecured on the roof of the new Lidl supermarket in Devizes.

A local building contractor was horrified to see workers at the site strolling across the building's roof without any form of harnessing or edge protection to prevent them plunging to the ground, 20 feet below.

A skip being lowered from a crane was seen to come close to the group of men laying tiles.

The local man, who does not want to be identified, said: "The conditions were poor. The skip was swaying in the breeze and could have knocked somebody from the roof.

"There was also a frost overnight and the temperature was still at freezing when I took the photos. The roof tiles are almost certainly icy. On top of that, there were people up there without hard hats on."

The incidents were observed while the finishing touches were being made to the store in the week leading up to Christmas.

The whistleblower reported the site to the Health and Safety Executive's local office, who said they had already been informed about the breaches.

He said: "They were still up there the next day. It begs the question, why, with a blatant infringement of regulations and lives at risk, are the HSE not down there issuing prohibition notices?"

The concerned local man took a number of photographs of the workers as they risked life and limb on the roof of the building, which is due to open on January 29.

The national magazine, Construction News, is running a story about the situation at Lidl in their current edition.

A spokesman for the Health and Safety Executive confirmed that the matter had been reported and would be investigated.

She added: "The main problem is that there was no edge protection at the top of the scaffolding to prevent someone falling off the roof. That is illegal. But there are different safety requirements for different kinds of roofs and it may be there are other breaches that need to be addressed."

A spokesman for Lidl said the company had launched an investigation and had demanded an explanation and assurances from its contractors.

The Health and Safety Executive is currently involved in a campaign to reduce the number of deaths and injuries caused by workers falling from heights.

They say that 68 people died and nearly 4,000 were seriously injured as a result of a fall from a height in the workplace.

It is the most common cause of major injury to employees, accounting for 15 per cent of all such injuries.

As a result, the Health and Safety Executive has included falls from heights in their eight priority programmes chosen to meet targets for the reduction in injury rates in the workplace.

A spokesman from the HSE said: "Experience shows that these events usually arise due to poor management control rather than because of equipment failure."

Last March, a building worker employed on the site of the new Crammer Court sheltered homes in Church Walk had a lucky escape when he fell two and a half metres onto solid concrete from the top of a wooden frame.

The 20-year-old man escaped with bruising. He was taken to hospital but released after treatment.

The HSE said that common factors behind fatal accidents through falls from heights on construction sites include failure to recognise a problem, failure to ensure that safe systems of work are followed, failure to provide safe systems of work, and inadequate information, instruction, training or supervision.