A building firm has lodged an appeal against a £200,000 fine imposed on it following the death of one of its employees.

Stewart Clague Services was handed the fine at the end of February after admitting health and safety breaches.

Gary Skelding, 56, was killed in August 2020 after scaffolding collapsed at the building site he was working on in King William’s College.

Site foreman Stephen Ian Phillips, 37, was handed a 12-month suspended sentence after being found guilty following a trial of failing to take reasonable care of the health and safety of himself and others.

His employers Stewart Clague Services admitted failing to ensure the health, safety and wellbeing of employees.

The court heard that Mr Phillips had been left to run the site without appropriate training and support.

Deemster Sandeep Kainth ordered the company, which had a turnover of just over £9m last year, to pay the £200,000 fine over three months.

He said the size of the fine would have an ‘economic impact that would bring home to management their need to comply with health and safety’.

SCS’s appeal against sentence is listed for June 12 before Judge of Appeal Anthony Cross KC and Deemster Pratt KC. The hearing, if it goes ahead, is expected to last half a day.

In a victim impact statement read out at sentencing, Gary Skelding’s widow Alison said: ‘I feel robbed of the life I had and was going to have.

‘No one expects their husband to go to work and not come home. I feel lost. My whole life has been turned upside down. Gaz didn’t deserve this and neither did I.’

The tragedy was the first major incident in the SCS’s half a century of trading.

Workers from the company had been renovating the school’s science block.

The court heard that a number of failings led to the fatality after the site foreman chose to place up to 45 plaster fireboards, each weighing more than 35kg, on the scaffolding instead of transporting them into the building individually due to concerns over high winds.

Mr Skelding, who had volunteered to help, fell from the six-metre high scaffold structure as it collapsed under him.

Following the accident, SCS director Alan Clague said: ‘Gary was a lovely guy, a friend and a well-liked member of the Laxey village community. All of his SCS colleagues are devastated by what has happened.’