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Posts with the 'Prosecutions' tag
Female worker crushed by reversing forklift truck
A company has been fined £6,000 for failing to monitor and supervise forklift truck movements in the packing area of its factory.
The court heard that the driver had reversed up to the injured person and a colleague in order to have a short conversation with them. She was crushed between the truck and a steel packing table. She sustained a fractured pelvis, damage to internal organs, and a broken left leg and spent some four months in hospital. A colleague sustained a minor foot injury in the same incident.
Prosecuting HSE inspector Joanne Nicholls said that an ineffective barrier meant to prevent lift trucks from entering the area had not been detected and rectified. She explained: "The barrier left an opening, which was wide enough to allow lift-truck access into an area where lift trucks were meant to be prohibited. The company also failed to adequately instruct relevant employees on the purpose of the barrier. This was compounded by inadequate supervision and monitoring by management, which allowed lift-trucks to breach the barrier during production. This accident highlights the complexities of managing transport risks in the workplace. Even with a fully trained lift-truck driver and a maintained forklift truck, accidents can still occur when insufficient attention is paid to pedestrian segregation and workplace layout."
Lack of access ladder on scaffold led to fall
A man on work experience suffered fractured ribs when he fell from a tower scaffold. The Company was fined £3000 after the magistrates court was told that there was no access ladder on the scaffold, and the working platform and edge protection was incomplete.
The man was using the scaffold to maintain a fluorescent light fitting at a factory unit, which the Company was refurbishing. He climbed up the internal bracing of the scaffold and fell 4.5 metres when the bar he pulled on came away.
The HSE served a prohibition notice on the scaffold to the two directors of the company, when it investigated the accident.
Pleading guilty to a breach of section 3(1) of the HSWA the company said that it had co-operated with the HSE, had not undertaken any work at height since the accident and showed audited accounts to the court on its ability to pay a fine as the company had only been trading six months when the accident happened. It was also ordered to pay costs of £1398.
Prosecuting inspector John Moran, after the case, was reported to have said that this had been an unnecessary accident as the company could have followed a HSE guidance note on tower scaffolds and hired an alternative scaffold.
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