A CONSTRUCTION boss was caught on camera watching one of his workmen balance precariously on an excavator bucket 12 feet above the ground.

Derek Hugh Barnes and his company, Paddle Ltd, which he is sole director of, were ordered to pay £110,000 in fines and costs following the episode and another serious incident which left a bricklayer with back and leg injuries.

The former millionaire, from Blackburn, was also given a suspended prison sentence and disqualified from being a company director for three years.

Barnes, once dubbed ‘the builder from hell’, showed ‘a blatant disregard’ of safety on his construction sites, according to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).

A worried householder took the picture after spotting the workman perching dangerously without safety precautions as he worked on a first floor window.

The HSE said that Barnes had been watching and clearly consenting to the machine being misused.

Six months earlier at the same construction site bricklayer Daniel King, 22, was injured after he fell 12 feet from scaffolding which was poorly constructed and overloaded.

There was no evidence it had been erected by a competent person as the law requires and it was found to be in very poor condition and missing vital fall protection measures.

The 75-year-old boss of a string of failed companies over the last 30 years, who has a luxury home in Pleasington, was accused by the judge of having ‘driven a coach and horses’ through health and safety legislation.

His conviction at Swansea Crown Court brought to an end a lengthy career as a building boss, which included running Northern Development (Holdings), which went into liquidation in 1975, and Pinedale Estates Ltd and New City Builders Merchants, which folded in 1992.

His firms have been involved in developments across East Lancashire including Brierfield, Haslingden and Whalley.

Judge Peter Griffiths heard that Barnes, formerly of Whins Lane, Read, who bid to become Blackburn Rovers chairman in the 1960’s, had a lengthy history of more than 100 controventions raised by the HSE all over the UK.

In 2005, Glasgow City councillor Alistair Watson said of Barnes: ‘He's the builder from hell' during a row over a half-built estate.

The latest prosecution followed two incidents at a site near Port Talbot, in South Wales, where the firm was building new homes.

Paddle Ltd, of Old Hall Lane, Pleasington, Blackburn, was fined £56,000 and ordered to pay £11,000 in costs after pleading guilty to breaches of the Work at Height Regulations 2005 and the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 on July 19 2013.

Barnes was sentenced to eight months imprisonment suspended for two years, disqualified from acting as a company director of three years and fined £32,000 with £11,000 costs after pleading guilty to breaching Section 37 of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974.

Sentencing Barnes, Judge Griffiths, said: “There has to be a level of deterrent. Other directors who control construction companies need to know they must apply the law and can’t cut corners. Derek Barnes has driven a coach and horses through the work at height regulations.”

HSE Inspector Phil Nicolle said: “Paddle Ltd and Derek Barnes have, over the years, shown a blatant disregard for health and safety management on their construction sites, as was clearly evident when we investigated the Baglan incidents.

“Worker safety was clearly compromised on both occasions and the failings we identified are textbook examples of why falls from height remain such a common problem in the construction industry.”

When the Lancashire Telegraph visited Mr Barnes’ luxury home, a middle-aged man answered the door and said: “He’s not at home.”

He did not reply to a request to contact the newspaper.