The Duty Holder. Australian workplace safety, on the record. The Duty Holder. Australian workplace safety, on the record.

Enforcement

Victoria has prosecuted 42 solar companies over falls, mostly before anyone fell

Most workplace-safety prosecution coverage follows an injury. WorkSafe Victoria’s solar-sector announcement on 26 August 2026 describes something different: 42 solar companies prosecuted since 2021 for failing to manage falls risks, more than $1.4 million in court-imposed penalties, and the vast majority being for observed working at height breaches where no incident had yet occurred. Nobody had to fall first. And the fine is only half of it: the regulator is now sharing data with Solar Victoria, which can suspend an operator from the Solar Homes Program.

30 August 2026 · from WorkSafe Victoria’s own releases · 3 sources

The scale of the harm, as the regulator states it

WorkSafe’s framing is that falls in construction, a category it says includes solar installation, have caused more than 2,300 workers injured and a further 20 sadly losing their lives since 2021. That is the whole construction industry rather than solar alone, and the release does not break the solar share out of it, so treat the 2,300 as context for the sector rather than a count of it.

What is specific to solar is the enforcement. Inspectors conduct at least three proactive visits each week to solar installation sites, on top of responding to incidents and complaints. That is a standing patrol, not a response.

The part worth noticing

Read the prosecution line again, because it inverts the usual story: Since 2021, WorkSafe has prosecuted 42 solar companies for failing to manage falls risks, resulting in more than $1.4 million in court-imposed penalties, with the vast majority being for observed working at height breaches where no incident had yet occurred.

Prosecution normally follows harm. Here the regulator is saying most of these 42 followed an inspector seeing an unprotected worker on a roof, and it says so deliberately. Its Chief Health and Safety Officer, Sam Jenkin, put the point directly: Some employers seem to think they can get away with taking dangerous shortcuts if no one gets hurt, but this sends a clear message that WorkSafe won't wait for a worker to fall before taking strong enforcement action.

Across 42 prosecutions, more than $1.4 million works out at upwards of about $33,000 each on average, which is our arithmetic and a floor rather than a figure, because the total is given as "more than".

The case that shows what "observed" means

A fortnight before the crackdown announcement, WorkSafe published one. HW Electrical Pty Ltd was convicted and fined $40,000, plus $2,268 costs, in the Heidelberg Magistrates’ Court on 6 August after pleading guilty to a single charge of failing to provide a workplace safe and without risks to health.

The company was installing solar panels on a single-storey house at Noble Park. In October 2024 an inspector attended and saw a first-year apprentice working on the roof without fall protection, close to 2.7 metres from the ground. The company’s sole director was present and told the inspector he had directed the apprentice onto the roof knowing there was no fall protection in place. During the inspection he prepared a safe work method statement and installed a guardrail.

No fall. No injury. A conviction, a $40,000 fine, and a safe work method statement written while the inspector waited.

The second lever, and it is the more interesting one

A fine is a cost. Losing your access to the subsidy that generates the work is a different order of problem, and that is what the data-sharing arrangement sets up.

WorkSafe and Solar Victoria are sharing more information to strengthen compliance and enforcement activity in the sector, including a WorkSafe data tool that integrates Solar Victoria installer notifications, enabling inspectors to identify activity in their area, target high-risk sites and consider an operator’s history, and the release specifies that this includes those that haven’t been inspected before and those with a record of non-compliance. An installer notification is a work lead for an inspector.

It is already producing outcomes. So far this year, 14 Solar Victoria investigations have been linked to WorkSafe enforcement activity, resulting in 10 suspensions for businesses found to have inadequate fall prevention measures. Solar Victoria’s chief executive, Stan Krpan, was explicit about the consequence: installers who fail can expect serious consequences – including suspension or cancellation from the program.

Our view. Tying a safety record to eligibility for a subsidy programme is a materially stronger deterrent than a penalty a business can price in, and it acts before a court date rather than years after one. It also concentrates a lot of consequence in an administrative decision, which is worth watching: a suspension is quicker than a prosecution and comes with less of the process a prosecution carries. That is an observation about the design, not a criticism of any decision made under it, and we have not examined how the programme handles review or appeal.

For the duties this all rests on, see our explainer on working at heights in Australian workplaces and, for who owes them, what a PCBU is.

How we did this

Three WorkSafe Victoria releases, read directly on 30 August 2026: the solar crackdown announcement of 26 August, the HW Electrical sentencing of 11 August, and the JS Armstrong Water Tanks sentencing of 12 August, which we read for context on the same falls theme and have not written up here. Every quotation is verbatim and every figure is the regulator’s, except the average penalty, which is our division of two of its numbers and is marked as ours.

We have not gone behind the releases to the court records. The sentencing details, the charge and the facts of the HW Electrical matter are as WorkSafe states them following a guilty plea, and we have not obtained the court file. We name the company because it is a concluded, published conviction; we do not name its director, because the regulator does not, and no individual was charged in what it published.

The 2,300 injuries and 20 deaths are construction-wide figures in the release, not solar figures, and the piece says so rather than letting them read as the sector’s toll.

Sources

  1. WorkSafe Victoria, Crackdown on falls risks in the solar sector, published 26 August 2026: the 42 prosecutions and more than $1.4 million since 2021, the observed-breach characterisation, the 2,300 injuries and 20 deaths across construction, the three proactive visits a week, the data tool and its description, the 14 investigations and 10 suspensions this year, and the quotations from Sam Jenkin and Stan Krpan.
  2. WorkSafe Victoria, Electrical company fined $40,000 over apprentice fall risk, published 11 August 2026: the HW Electrical conviction, fine and costs, the court and sentencing date, the guilty plea and charge, the Noble Park solar installation, the apprentice at 2.7 metres, and the director’s statement to the inspector.
  3. WorkSafe Victoria, Water tank company fined $50,000 after three-metre fall, published 12 August 2026: read for context on the same falls enforcement theme in the same month.

Spotted an error? Request a correction and we will check it against the source and log the outcome here.