Multinational steelmaker Corus has been fined £240,000 after a lorry driver was crushed to death at its site in Staffordshire.
The firm was prosecuted by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) after three tonnes of steel plates fell on 22-year-old Netherton man, Ross Beddow, at the firm's base in Wombourne.
Corus (UK) Ltd, registered at 30 Millbank, London, was also ordered to pay £112,500 costs at Stafford Crown Court today after it pleaded guilty to breaching Section 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974.
The court heard how on 4 January 2007, Mr Beddow, who was employed by A Hingley Transport Ltd, was helping to load steel plates onto a lorry. A Corus employee was operating a crane to lift a three-tonne pack of steel from a trailer, however, the load was not level, and as it was lifted it fell on top of Mr Beddow and killed him.
An HSE investigation showed the system of work for loading steel was unsafe. Not all the individual tasks involved had been evaluated and there was scope for misunderstanding between workers.
HSE inspector Dr Wai-Kin Liu said:
"This was a tragedy that could and should have been avoided. All the steps involved in an overall task should be analysed to create a safe system of work, and the consequences of something going wrong should always be taken into account.
"Anyone can make errors - no matter how well trained and motivated they are - but employers must develop a safe way of working that helps to prevent mistakes and reduces the severity of the consequences if they do occur. If Corus had a safe system of working then Mr Beddow would not have been killed simply doing his job."
Monday, 19 April 2010
5 meter fall....
A plant hire company has been fined £200,000 for health and safety failings that lead to an employee falling five metres to his death.
An investigation by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) showed that the company failed to follow its own health and safety guidelines for work at height.
HSE prosecuted Ashtead Plant Hire Co Ltd trading as APlant who admitted breaching Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974.
The company, based at Dalton Ave in Birchwood Park, Warrington was also ordered to pay £15,698.30 in costs at Maidstone Crown Court today.
Phillip Pearce, aged 55, from the Medway area, had worked as a fitter at the company's depot at Tovil, Maidstone - where they provide portable accommodation units to the construction industry - for less than three months when he died on 16 August 2006.
Mr Pearce's job was to prepare the accommodation units - including site huts, welfare units and storage containers - which were then hired out to construction companies.
With two units stacked on top of each other, Mr Pearce climbed onto the top of the stack to help attach lifting chains so that the top unit could be lifted down. He fell more than five metres and died at the scene.
Ashtead Plant Hire Co Ltd had a written procedure for work on top of accommodation units in its depots and at customers' sites. This required people to wear a safety harness and inertia reel line and climb a secured ladder. If they slipped or fell, the line would lock and prevent a serious fall.
HSE's investigation found that workers at the depot had not been issued with this kit or been trained to use it and most did not know the company had a special procedure for doing this work.
The court heard that despite the depot handling up to 15 accommodation unit movements a day, management at the depot did not ensure that workers were aware of the procedure and did not ensure that the work was only done by those trained, equipped and authorised.
HSE Inspector John Underwood said:
"This was a wholly avoidable incident which led to a tragic and totally unnecessary loss of life.
"It is completely inexcusable that the company had indentified the risks, prepared an adequate procedure to manage the risk, and then failed to implement that procedure to protect their workers.
"Health and safety is not just about filling in forms or thinking about risk, it's about taking action to prevent people being killed or injured while trying to do their job.
"I hope this case will be an example to other companies that not only must health and safety be taken seriously but also followed through."
Last year more than 4,000 employees suffered major injuries after falling from height at work, and 21 workers in the construction industry died. For more information go to www.hse.gov.uk/shatteredlives
An investigation by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) showed that the company failed to follow its own health and safety guidelines for work at height.
HSE prosecuted Ashtead Plant Hire Co Ltd trading as APlant who admitted breaching Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974.
The company, based at Dalton Ave in Birchwood Park, Warrington was also ordered to pay £15,698.30 in costs at Maidstone Crown Court today.
Phillip Pearce, aged 55, from the Medway area, had worked as a fitter at the company's depot at Tovil, Maidstone - where they provide portable accommodation units to the construction industry - for less than three months when he died on 16 August 2006.
Mr Pearce's job was to prepare the accommodation units - including site huts, welfare units and storage containers - which were then hired out to construction companies.
With two units stacked on top of each other, Mr Pearce climbed onto the top of the stack to help attach lifting chains so that the top unit could be lifted down. He fell more than five metres and died at the scene.
Ashtead Plant Hire Co Ltd had a written procedure for work on top of accommodation units in its depots and at customers' sites. This required people to wear a safety harness and inertia reel line and climb a secured ladder. If they slipped or fell, the line would lock and prevent a serious fall.
HSE's investigation found that workers at the depot had not been issued with this kit or been trained to use it and most did not know the company had a special procedure for doing this work.
The court heard that despite the depot handling up to 15 accommodation unit movements a day, management at the depot did not ensure that workers were aware of the procedure and did not ensure that the work was only done by those trained, equipped and authorised.
HSE Inspector John Underwood said:
"This was a wholly avoidable incident which led to a tragic and totally unnecessary loss of life.
"It is completely inexcusable that the company had indentified the risks, prepared an adequate procedure to manage the risk, and then failed to implement that procedure to protect their workers.
"Health and safety is not just about filling in forms or thinking about risk, it's about taking action to prevent people being killed or injured while trying to do their job.
"I hope this case will be an example to other companies that not only must health and safety be taken seriously but also followed through."
Last year more than 4,000 employees suffered major injuries after falling from height at work, and 21 workers in the construction industry died. For more information go to www.hse.gov.uk/shatteredlives
Tuesday, 6 April 2010
Fall through Skylight
A Llanelli cladding firm has been fined after an employee fell through an open skylight at a retail unit he was working on.
Stephen Armstrong-Esther was re-cladding a retail outlet roof at the Parc Trostre retail outlet when the incident occurred on 2 August 2005.
In a prosecution brought by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), Llanelli Magistrates' Court heard Mr Armstrong-Esther was working for Ammex Ltd, of Llannon Road, Pontyberem.
He was carrying a roof panel with a colleague when he fell almost four metres through an unprotected skylight onto a mezzanine floor below. He sustained serious injuries including fractures to his ribs and back, nerve damage to his leg and also memory and hearing loss.
Ammex Ltd was fined £10,000 and ordered to pay £6,750 costs after pleading guilty yesterday (29 March 2010) to charges under Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974.
In warning of the dangers of working at height, HSE Inspector Anne Marie Orrells said:
"This case has concluded at a time when HSE is reminding those in the construction industry of the dangers of working at height and the devastating effects of slips trips and falls through its Shattered Lives campaign.
"The HSE is currently carrying out visits in Wales to highlight the possible dangers involved in refurbishment and roofing work.
"Mr Armstrong-Esther has suffered long lasting effects from his injuries since the incident which is now four years ago, and which could have been prevented. Openings, such as skylights, in roofs must have suitable protection around them to prevent workers from falling into them."
One worker died and 243 were injured as a result of a slip, trip or fall in the construction industry in Wales in 2008/09.
Stephen Armstrong-Esther was re-cladding a retail outlet roof at the Parc Trostre retail outlet when the incident occurred on 2 August 2005.
In a prosecution brought by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), Llanelli Magistrates' Court heard Mr Armstrong-Esther was working for Ammex Ltd, of Llannon Road, Pontyberem.
He was carrying a roof panel with a colleague when he fell almost four metres through an unprotected skylight onto a mezzanine floor below. He sustained serious injuries including fractures to his ribs and back, nerve damage to his leg and also memory and hearing loss.
Ammex Ltd was fined £10,000 and ordered to pay £6,750 costs after pleading guilty yesterday (29 March 2010) to charges under Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974.
In warning of the dangers of working at height, HSE Inspector Anne Marie Orrells said:
"This case has concluded at a time when HSE is reminding those in the construction industry of the dangers of working at height and the devastating effects of slips trips and falls through its Shattered Lives campaign.
"The HSE is currently carrying out visits in Wales to highlight the possible dangers involved in refurbishment and roofing work.
"Mr Armstrong-Esther has suffered long lasting effects from his injuries since the incident which is now four years ago, and which could have been prevented. Openings, such as skylights, in roofs must have suitable protection around them to prevent workers from falling into them."
One worker died and 243 were injured as a result of a slip, trip or fall in the construction industry in Wales in 2008/09.
Take a Risk?
There's a video on YouTube of a woman holding fistfuls of methane bubbles which are then ignited – a great tower of flame leaping from her hands. A group of schoolchildren look on.
Surely there are all kinds of health and safety rules about playing with fire in front of children?
But, no, the woman in the “flaming hands” clip is none other than Judith Hackitt, chair of the Health and Safety Executive. The idea is to show that spectacular science demonstrations should, with proper precautions, be taking place in schools.
While her job is to ensure the safety of every workplace, Hackitt's public role has also been to dispel the burgeoning myths about health and safety.
“It's one of the reasons I took on the job, because I was absolutely fed up with it,” she explains.
Soon after we sit down in the MediaCityUK marketing suite at Salford Quays she says warily: “You're going to ask me about conkers now, aren't you.”
I am..but not quite yet.
We're in a world of cranes, earth-movers and high-visibility jackets, and Hackitt is here to take a look at “one of the biggest construction sites in the country”.
She expects to find best practice here, and does, describing contractor Bovis Lend Lease's work at the 36-acre site as “truly impressive”.
But bad things still happen elsewhere every day.
“People continue to fall off things, whether it's ladders, platforms or whatever; people continue to have things dropped on them from a height, and the other is people getting knocked over and crushed by moving machinery,” she says.
In 2008/9, 180 workers were killed at work and 131,895 other injuries were reported.
Challenge
“There are some sectors that stand out as a continuing challenge. Construction is one – not so much large projects like this , but at the smaller business end,” says Hackitt, who worked for 25 years in the chemical industry. “Agriculture is an industry where there seems to be an alarming sense of 'That's just the way it is'. The fact is that one person a week dies in agriculture, still. It doesn't have to be dangerous any more than any other sector has to be dangerous.
“One area of growing concern for us is waste and recycling, from collection on streets to recycling facilities. Very often they are very primitive in terms of lots of conveyor belts, people sorting broken bottles and goodness knows what.”
It's not a boast we can often make these days, but Britain leads the world on health and safety, our accident statistics being the lowest, our safety strategies copied by many other nations.
And yet health and safety – or, more likely, “elf and safety” - is often seen as a byword for rule-bound, killjoy, nonsensical bureaucracy. The HSE's website has a long list of “elf and safety” myths: graduates told not to throw mortar boards, poles in fire stations banned, regulations meaning trapeze artists would have to wear hard hats, snowball-throwing deemed too dangerous and panto actors banned from throwing sweets into the audience.
Like conkers and goggles, these stories often have a grain of truth. A well-meaning but misguided headteacher did once tell pupils to wear safety goggles when playing conkers. The myth is that the HSE is behind such rules.
“The problem is this: people are afraid of being sued,” says Hackitt. “ They're afraid that if something happens, someone will make a claim against them, so they hide behind the excuse 'I can't do this because of health and safety'. The no win, no fee provision allows people to see whether there's anything in it for them.”
We have become a more risk-averse society, says Hackitt.
“The more you take the big risks out of society, the more people start worrying about things that really shouldn't matter,” she adds. “What we are starting to see, which worries me a great deal, is the extent to which over-protective parents in particular get the whole notion of risk out of proportion.They wrap their kids in cotton wool, and it's creating a bigger problem because you create some cossetted kid who thinks he's indestructible because he's never been exposed to risk. So when he comes up against risk, whether it's on a school trip or, worse still, when it comes to work, he looks around and says 'Who's looking after me, because that's not my job'.”
Hackitt's own two daughters, now aged 25 and 22, each took gap years before university, travelling alone to Mexico and Tanzania. They were given advice and some useful contact details, but otherwise the message was “You're on your own”.
“You reach a point where you have to let go,” she adds.
The HSE has been involved in producing a new, simplified risk assessment for school trips, aiming to reverse an increasing trend for schools to opt out of such activities.
“In some cases, it is because their local authority has handed them a risk assessment package which may be 40 or 50 pages long, and said 'You've got to fill this in for everything you do'. Our answer is, no, that's not what we want.”
The HSE's example of a risk assessment for a school trip runs to just three pages.
You wonder how much Hackitt blames the media for public antipathy towards “elf and safety”.
“The media has done what the medai is paid to do – you pick up stories, ridiculous stories and print them,” she says. “The sad bit is that someone, somewhere has used health and safety as an excuse for can't be bothered, don't want to buy the insurance, just too lazy or whatever.”
Surely there are all kinds of health and safety rules about playing with fire in front of children?
But, no, the woman in the “flaming hands” clip is none other than Judith Hackitt, chair of the Health and Safety Executive. The idea is to show that spectacular science demonstrations should, with proper precautions, be taking place in schools.
While her job is to ensure the safety of every workplace, Hackitt's public role has also been to dispel the burgeoning myths about health and safety.
“It's one of the reasons I took on the job, because I was absolutely fed up with it,” she explains.
Soon after we sit down in the MediaCityUK marketing suite at Salford Quays she says warily: “You're going to ask me about conkers now, aren't you.”
I am..but not quite yet.
We're in a world of cranes, earth-movers and high-visibility jackets, and Hackitt is here to take a look at “one of the biggest construction sites in the country”.
She expects to find best practice here, and does, describing contractor Bovis Lend Lease's work at the 36-acre site as “truly impressive”.
But bad things still happen elsewhere every day.
“People continue to fall off things, whether it's ladders, platforms or whatever; people continue to have things dropped on them from a height, and the other is people getting knocked over and crushed by moving machinery,” she says.
In 2008/9, 180 workers were killed at work and 131,895 other injuries were reported.
Challenge
“There are some sectors that stand out as a continuing challenge. Construction is one – not so much large projects like this , but at the smaller business end,” says Hackitt, who worked for 25 years in the chemical industry. “Agriculture is an industry where there seems to be an alarming sense of 'That's just the way it is'. The fact is that one person a week dies in agriculture, still. It doesn't have to be dangerous any more than any other sector has to be dangerous.
“One area of growing concern for us is waste and recycling, from collection on streets to recycling facilities. Very often they are very primitive in terms of lots of conveyor belts, people sorting broken bottles and goodness knows what.”
It's not a boast we can often make these days, but Britain leads the world on health and safety, our accident statistics being the lowest, our safety strategies copied by many other nations.
And yet health and safety – or, more likely, “elf and safety” - is often seen as a byword for rule-bound, killjoy, nonsensical bureaucracy. The HSE's website has a long list of “elf and safety” myths: graduates told not to throw mortar boards, poles in fire stations banned, regulations meaning trapeze artists would have to wear hard hats, snowball-throwing deemed too dangerous and panto actors banned from throwing sweets into the audience.
Like conkers and goggles, these stories often have a grain of truth. A well-meaning but misguided headteacher did once tell pupils to wear safety goggles when playing conkers. The myth is that the HSE is behind such rules.
“The problem is this: people are afraid of being sued,” says Hackitt. “ They're afraid that if something happens, someone will make a claim against them, so they hide behind the excuse 'I can't do this because of health and safety'. The no win, no fee provision allows people to see whether there's anything in it for them.”
We have become a more risk-averse society, says Hackitt.
“The more you take the big risks out of society, the more people start worrying about things that really shouldn't matter,” she adds. “What we are starting to see, which worries me a great deal, is the extent to which over-protective parents in particular get the whole notion of risk out of proportion.They wrap their kids in cotton wool, and it's creating a bigger problem because you create some cossetted kid who thinks he's indestructible because he's never been exposed to risk. So when he comes up against risk, whether it's on a school trip or, worse still, when it comes to work, he looks around and says 'Who's looking after me, because that's not my job'.”
Hackitt's own two daughters, now aged 25 and 22, each took gap years before university, travelling alone to Mexico and Tanzania. They were given advice and some useful contact details, but otherwise the message was “You're on your own”.
“You reach a point where you have to let go,” she adds.
The HSE has been involved in producing a new, simplified risk assessment for school trips, aiming to reverse an increasing trend for schools to opt out of such activities.
“In some cases, it is because their local authority has handed them a risk assessment package which may be 40 or 50 pages long, and said 'You've got to fill this in for everything you do'. Our answer is, no, that's not what we want.”
The HSE's example of a risk assessment for a school trip runs to just three pages.
You wonder how much Hackitt blames the media for public antipathy towards “elf and safety”.
“The media has done what the medai is paid to do – you pick up stories, ridiculous stories and print them,” she says. “The sad bit is that someone, somewhere has used health and safety as an excuse for can't be bothered, don't want to buy the insurance, just too lazy or whatever.”
Monday, 22 March 2010
First Aid at Work Course
Book now for our special rate £1395 plus VAT for full 3 day HSE approved First Aid at Work Course at your place of work (depending on space)
12 delegates maximum...Just £116.25 per person.
Alternatively if you don not have the numbers contact us for details of our public courses in and around London and the South East.
Contact us on 0208 274 2926 or info@rhssltd.co.uk
12 delegates maximum...Just £116.25 per person.
Alternatively if you don not have the numbers contact us for details of our public courses in and around London and the South East.
Contact us on 0208 274 2926 or info@rhssltd.co.uk
Directors prosecuted over ladder fall
Two directors of a decorating firm have been prosecuted after a worker was left brain damaged while working at a residential refurbishment.
Self-employed Trevor Dawson from Ravensthorpe, West Yorkshire, was working as a painter on a student accommodation refurbishment when the incident happened 15 August 2007.
Huddersfield Magistrates' Court heard Mr Dawson, 58, was working at Ashenhurst Student Village in Newsom when he apparently fell from a ladder, though no witnesses could confirm this.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) yesterday (16 March) prosecuted, Liversedge Decorating Contractors Ltd, two of its directors, and a second company Foster Turn-Key Contracts Ltd for health and safety breaches.
The HSE investigation found principal contractor Foster Turn-Key Contracts Ltd and Liversedge Decorating Contractors Ltd, contracted to decorate the flats, had allowed work to be carried out that was not adequately planned or supervised and had used inappropriate equipment.
Liversedge Decorating Contractors Ltd of Mountain Road, Thornhill, Dewsbury, pleaded guilty to breaching regulation 4 (1) of the Work at Height Regulations 2005, and were fined £2,000. Paul Daniel of Smithy Carr Lane, Brighouse, and Clive Dewhirst of Mountain Road, Thornhill, Dewsbury, both directors of the firm, also pleaded guilty to the same charge. They were fined £1,000 each.
Foster Turn-Key Contractors of Plover Road, Lindley, Huddersfield, pleaded guilty to breaching Regulation 22 (1) of the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2007. They were fined £2,000.
Mr Dawson is unable to recall any details of the incident because of his injuries sustained to his head.
After the hearing HSE Inspector David Stewart said:
"The ladder Trevor Dawson used, which we believe may have caused or contributed to his fall, was simply not suitable for the work he was doing. It was a domestic step ladder which should not have been allowed on the site.
"In this situation, a tower scaffold would have been much more appropriate.
"Falls from height remain the single most common cause of fatality and serious injury in the construction industry. The law is quite clear and HSE provides freely-available guidance on how work at height should be managed.
"In this instance, individual directors of a company were found guilty for not planning and supervising the work properly. This case should send a clear message to company directors about their responsibilities for health and safety."
Self-employed Trevor Dawson from Ravensthorpe, West Yorkshire, was working as a painter on a student accommodation refurbishment when the incident happened 15 August 2007.
Huddersfield Magistrates' Court heard Mr Dawson, 58, was working at Ashenhurst Student Village in Newsom when he apparently fell from a ladder, though no witnesses could confirm this.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) yesterday (16 March) prosecuted, Liversedge Decorating Contractors Ltd, two of its directors, and a second company Foster Turn-Key Contracts Ltd for health and safety breaches.
The HSE investigation found principal contractor Foster Turn-Key Contracts Ltd and Liversedge Decorating Contractors Ltd, contracted to decorate the flats, had allowed work to be carried out that was not adequately planned or supervised and had used inappropriate equipment.
Liversedge Decorating Contractors Ltd of Mountain Road, Thornhill, Dewsbury, pleaded guilty to breaching regulation 4 (1) of the Work at Height Regulations 2005, and were fined £2,000. Paul Daniel of Smithy Carr Lane, Brighouse, and Clive Dewhirst of Mountain Road, Thornhill, Dewsbury, both directors of the firm, also pleaded guilty to the same charge. They were fined £1,000 each.
Foster Turn-Key Contractors of Plover Road, Lindley, Huddersfield, pleaded guilty to breaching Regulation 22 (1) of the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2007. They were fined £2,000.
Mr Dawson is unable to recall any details of the incident because of his injuries sustained to his head.
After the hearing HSE Inspector David Stewart said:
"The ladder Trevor Dawson used, which we believe may have caused or contributed to his fall, was simply not suitable for the work he was doing. It was a domestic step ladder which should not have been allowed on the site.
"In this situation, a tower scaffold would have been much more appropriate.
"Falls from height remain the single most common cause of fatality and serious injury in the construction industry. The law is quite clear and HSE provides freely-available guidance on how work at height should be managed.
"In this instance, individual directors of a company were found guilty for not planning and supervising the work properly. This case should send a clear message to company directors about their responsibilities for health and safety."
Monday, 1 March 2010
First Corporate Manslaughter Case on hold
The first case to be brought against a UK company under the new Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act has been adjourned due to concerns over the health of its director.
Charges were laid by the Crown Prosecution Service in April 2009 against Cotswold Geotechnical (Holdings), following the death of one of its employee, Alex Wright, on a Gloucestershire site in September 2008.
The company and its managing director Peter Eaton were charged with manslaughter by gross negligence and a health and safety offence in his own personal capacity.
Mr Justice Field heard submissions in private on 26 February 2010. He directed that the trial be adjourned for at least 18 weeks and be listed to resume in early October 2010.
Field said Eaton must undergo urgent medical treatment of a character which would render it unfair and oppressive for him to have to participate in the trial at the same time.
Eaton could be jailed for life if convicted, while Cotswold Geotechnical faces an unlimited fine.
Charges were laid by the Crown Prosecution Service in April 2009 against Cotswold Geotechnical (Holdings), following the death of one of its employee, Alex Wright, on a Gloucestershire site in September 2008.
The company and its managing director Peter Eaton were charged with manslaughter by gross negligence and a health and safety offence in his own personal capacity.
Mr Justice Field heard submissions in private on 26 February 2010. He directed that the trial be adjourned for at least 18 weeks and be listed to resume in early October 2010.
Field said Eaton must undergo urgent medical treatment of a character which would render it unfair and oppressive for him to have to participate in the trial at the same time.
Eaton could be jailed for life if convicted, while Cotswold Geotechnical faces an unlimited fine.
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