Fine for flour mill after workers severs finger
A Northamptonshire-based flour company has been fined £300,000 after a maintenance worker severed one of his fingers in machinery.
The incident happened at ADM Milling Limited at its site on Earlstrees Industrial Estate in Corby on 28 June 2023.
David Wood, who was 59 at the time, had been carrying out maintenance work on a packer closing station. However, the 800-kilogram machine became unbalanced and tipped backwards, trapping his left hand. This resulted in the little finger on the hand being severed.
The incident was investigated by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) which found the company had failed to safely manage the risks of people performing maintenance at its factory.
ADM Milling Limited were required to fully assess the task that the injured person was assigned, to ensure that his health and safety was not put at risk.
HSE guidance states that maintenance work needs to be correctly planned and carried out. Unsafe maintenance has caused many fatalities and serious injuries, either during the work or as a result of using badly/wrongly maintained machines. Further guidance can be found here: Maintenance of work equipment – HSE
Edinburgh Airport fined after pensioner fell from ambulift
- James Young died in hospital more than a week after the fall
- Locking fault on “ambulift” had been in place for some time before incident
- HSE guidance is available on the maintenance of work equipment.
The owner of Edinburgh Airport has been fined £80,000 after a pensioner fell from an ambulift on his return from holiday.
Following the fall, James Young was admitted to hospital, but died more than a week later from his injuries .
The 81-year-old had just landed at the airport after holidaying on the Greek island of Rhodes with his wife Anne, when the incident happened on 28 November 2023.
Mr Young and his wife, who has mobility issues, had been waiting for one of the airport’s ambulifts to assist them disembarking the aircraft shortly after 4pm. The couple had been two of six people requiring the assistance of the ambulift following the flight.
Ambulifts are a specially designed vehicle to assist passengers with reduced mobility. Edinburgh airport has several such vehicles which are owned, maintained and operated by the airport and driven by its employees.
Passengers who cannot embark or disembark using the aircraft steps can use an ambulift cabin, which is capable of being elevated to the level of the aircraft’s door and lowered to the chassis of the vehicle. At the rear of the vehicle, a tail lift platform is then deployed to the same level as the floor level of the passenger compartment.
Taylor Wimpey fined £800,000 after teen apprentice injured on site
A housebuilder has been fined £800,000 after a teen apprentice was injured when a temporary stairwell covering collapsed.
Charlie Marsh, 17, had been working as a contractor on a Taylor Wimpey UK Limited site as it built around 450 new homes on its Meadfields site in Weston-Super-Mare.
The apprentice bricklayer, from Whitchurch in Bristol, was less than 12 months into his career when the incident happened. An investigator for the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) said the teen was lucky to escape serious injury.
On 22 August 2023 Charlie had been loading concrete blocks onto the temporary flooring on the first floor of one of the newly built homes. The blocks were being loaded into stacks of between 10 and 20, one of which was on or near to a temporary stairwell covering. This was a large area covered with a timber sheet material laid over joists – both of which would be later removed to install the staircase.
However, the area collapsed, causing Charlie and around 20kg of the concrete blocks to fall more than two metres to the ground below. He sustained injuries to his fingers, hand, wrist and shoulder.
The subsequent HSE investigation found that the joists under the timber sheet material should have been back propped. This was mentioned a number of times in Taylor Wimpey’s own health and safety manual for the site, however, it had been missed on this particular plot. Had suitably designed back propping been used, it is unlikely the incident would have occurred.
- HSE guidance (L153 – Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015) states that all practicable steps must be taken to prevent danger to any person from structural collapses and that an employer has a duty to ensure that contractors under their control should not be exposed to risks of their health or safety (Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974).
Metal gate manufacturer fined after exposing workers to serious safety risks
A metal gate manufacturing company has been prosecuted after repeatedly ignoring Health and Safety Executive (HSE) enforcement notices.
Research and Development in Opening Gates Limited was first visited by HSE at its site in Grantham, Lincolnshire, where inspectors identified serious safety breaches, including unsafe equipment, inadequate control of welding fume, and poor structural integrity in workplace areas accessed by employees and visitors.
Three Improvement Notices were served following the initial inspection. These required the company to:
- Take effective measures to control employee and non-employee exposure to welding fume, a substance hazardous to health.
- Assess the structural safety of a mezzanine floor in use at the site.
- Ensure lifting equipment, including a forklift truck, had undergone a thorough examination to confirm it was safe to use.
Further material breaches were identified in a Notification of Contravention letter, including:
- Unguarded dangerous parts of machinery.
- Inadequate edge protection on the mezzanine floor to prevent falls from height.
- Electrical systems not constructed to prevent, so far as reasonably practicable, danger.
- Unsafe storage of flammable gases.
- No competent person appointed to assist with health and safety management.
Despite this enforcement, follow-up inspections revealed continued non-compliance. HSE returned to the site five more times, serving three additional Improvement Notices and one Prohibition Notice.
The Prohibition Notice was issued during a second visit in relation to ducting installed above welding benches. The ducting was supported by unstable and unsecured structures that were visibly bowing, posing a serious risk of personal injury should it collapse. The installation had been intended to control exposure to welding fume but was found to be unsafe and ineffective.
Two further Notification of Contravention letters were also sent to the company. During the intervention, compliance deadlines were extended on two occasions, but legal requirements were still not met. The company’s failings put employees, contractors and visitors at risk of serious harm. Reasonably practicable measures could have been taken to control these risks, but the company failed to do so.
An investigation by HSE found that Research and Development in Opening Gates Limited had failed to ensure the health, safety and welfare of its employees and others affected by its work activities. The company’s standard of health and safety management fell significantly below legal requirements, leading to a proactive prosecution.
Suspended prison sentence following death of young roofer
- Two companies also fined.
- Young roofer was on just his second day on the job.
- Falls from height remain one of the leading causes of workplace death and HSE guidance is available.
A director has been given a suspended jail sentence and two companies fined after a young man on just his second day on the job fell to his death at a premises in Walsall.
Adam Brunskill, 22, had been part of a team of four men working on the roof of Bestway Wholesale in Bloxwich Lane, near Reedswood. On 14 July 2020, he fell through an unprotected glass-wire skylight to the concrete floor approximately 23-feet below. He sustained a severe brain injury and died in hospital the following day.
It had only been Adam’s second day working as a roofer on the project to install over-cladding to the large industrial unit.
Building firm fined after house collapse injures four
- Two workers were on first floor when collapse happened.
- “Lucky nobody was killed”, says HSE inspector.
- HSE guidance is available.
A London construction company has been fined £50,000 after four men were injured – two seriously – when the first floor of a house collapsed during building works.
Aryn Stones Ltd had been contracted to build a new domestic property in Hampstead. On 31 May 2022, remedial works were being carried out on a partially built beam-and-block floor, when it collapsed, taking two of the workers down with it.
The two men include a welder, who is now 62, and a 31-year-old bricklayer. They both sustained life-changing injuries, while two other men who were standing at ground level were injured by falling concrete.
Work on the build began in March 2021 but by February the following year, engineers who inspected the property identified errors with the connections of the structural steel beams. This prompted the remedial works that led the structure to collapse. That came about when the welder was using an oxyacetylene torch to cut a steel beam supporting the first floor. However, at the same time, another worker had been removing some Acrow props that were supporting the beam.
An investigation by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) found that Aryn Stones Ltd had failed to ensure the structure did not collapse while it was in a state of temporary weakness. The company also failed to put any measures in place to manage the temporary remedial work being carried out on the steel connections. They also failed to take all practicable steps to prevent danger to any person while the building was in a temporary state of weakness.