Mesh Consulting specialise in helping companies to have healthy and safe businesses but unfortunately there are companies who have horror stories when health and safety issues haven’t been fully taken into consideration.
Here we show you a few of the immense numbers of horror stories that exist so that you can see the mistakes other companies have made and so ensure that the same doesn’t happen to you.
After reading the horror stories, please do feel free to look at our services or contact us for a no-obligation confidential discussion about how we can help you avoid experiencing such horror stories in the future.
- Pedestrians must be protected against exposure to moving vehicles in the workplace, as failure to provide adequate protection can often result in fatal consequences. This is illustrated in the case of British Sugar plc and VM Plant Ltd who were fined £650,000 following the death of a woman at a British Sugar plc factory. A dispatch clerk was killed on 5 February 2003 when she was run-over by a shovelling vehicle at British Sugar's factory in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk. British Sugar admitted that they
failed to ensure the safety of their workers. Cambridge-based contractor VM Plant Ltd, which owned and operated the shovelling vehicle involved in the accident was also found guilty and fined £250,000 for failing to ensure the health and safety of employees and people not in its employment. The court heard that VM Plant failed to carry out a sufficient risk assessment covering the operation of shovel vehicles at the site. VM Plant also failed to provide drivers of shovel vehicles with adequate training to ensure
they operated the vehicles safely. The firm was ordered to pay prosecution costs of £13,739.
- Sofedit UK admitted to breaching health and safety legislation which led to the death of an employee, who was crushed after four steel bins were accidentally knocked over onto him. The Crown Court judge criticised the company for not adequately protecting its 350 employees, and stated that if the company had installed a barrier, costing just £3,815, the incident would never have happened. The company was fined £70,000 for failing to ensure the health and safety of its employees and £35,000 for failing
to regulate the management of health and safety at work.
- A company has been fined £10,000 after an employee was electrocuted whilst servicing a CCTV camera. Optyma Security Systems pleaded guilty to breaching s.2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 for the accident in which an employee suffered a fractured skull after falling from a ladder when he received an electric shock. The HSE inspector commented: "This case highlights the importance of choosing the right method of access for work that has to be done at height. Every year about
80 people are killed and more than 5,500 seriously injured as a result of falling from a height. Ladders are not always suitable. In particular, when workers need to use both hands to do the job, mobile elevating work platforms are the best choice."
- Heavy files of papers were stacked on top of a 6ft tall cabinet in the Swansea office of electricity and gas company Swalec. This hazard had previously been recorded during an inspection but no action had been taken to make it safe as this would have involved paying someone overtime. Mrs Richard was near the cabinet when the files toppled over and she was struck on the neck. She needed two titanium plates in her neck and remained in intensive care for 3 days - the company tried to dissuade her from
recording the accident in the accident book. This happened in 1995 and five years later, in December 2000, Ms Richards was awarded £150,000 in an out-of-court settlement (unreported, December 2000).
- A student who lost part of his fingers after a school activity went wrong has agreed damages of £300,000 in an out-of-court settlement. He launched action against Western Isles Council on the grounds it had failed to exercise proper care after he suffered burns to his hands during a class project, which he claims created a material risk he would suffer burns. As part of his craft and design work he was told to make a plaster cast of his arm. This involved him placing his arm in a bag of plaster of
Paris powder and water which was secured in a wooden box. When he put his arm in, his hand became hot and then painful but he could not remove it because the plaster had solidified. It took ten minutes to remove the plaster, by which time his fingers were black, swollen and bleeding. He required skin grafts and part of his fingers amputating. It was discovered after the incident that the plaster used had a storage life of months yet the council had kept it for more than six years. Western Isles Council insisted
that the labelling did not have adequate warnings.
- An east London company failed to protect the edge of a ten-foot high
mezzanine floor at its factory, leading to an employee sustaining
injuries from which he may never fully recover. Although there was
a gate in place to protect the edge it could not be closed as a pallet
of goods obstructed it. The employee fell, suffering severe injuries
that necessitated a 15-week stay in hospital. The company were ordered
to pay £17,000. It was commented, “managers need
to be aware of any dangerous practices that may develop at their workplaces
and how to prevent them”.
- A garage manager was jailed for 9 months after an apprentice mechanic was engulfed in flames at the garage he was working at. The teenager died four days later from horrific burns. The garage owner was fined £25,000. The HSE inspector commented, “minimal attempts had been made to overcome the hazards associated with fuel handling”. The main defence used was that, when it came to health and safety, they relied on common sense.
- A 25-foot fall from a mobile elevated work platform led to an untrained worker breaking his back. A facilities company and sub-contractor were both found guilty and ordered to pay a total of £125,000. Although a risk assessment and method statement had identified that only trained operatives should use the equipment, the employees sent to carry out the task had not received proper training.
- A lack of protective clothing and bad practices led to a broken bottle containing corrosive chemicals severely burning an employee of a chemical manufacturer. The employee was working alone with the chemical when a bottle broke releasing thick fumes on contact with the air. The employee lost consciousness briefly, slipped and sat down into the spill, causing severe burns requiring skin grafts. The company pleaded guilty and were ordered to pay £11,750. The HSE inspector handling the case commented,
“its imperative that when working with hazardous chemicals that adequate risk assessments are carried out and suitable control measures are put in place”.
- An incident involving badly stacked timber pallets that left a worker
badly injured and unable to work has cost Conway Packaging Services
Ltd £12,000. The two central issues were unsafe systems of work
and manual handling practices. A risk assessment carried out after
the incident virtually eliminated the unsafe system of working. On
the manual handling issue, 80kg loads were routinely handled by two
people, this could have been overcome using the overhead travelling
crane on the premises. The HSE inspector concluded, “what they
were doing was high-risk and the solution was easy when properly risk
assessed”.
- BHS was ordered to pay £36,000 after one of its employees fractured her skull when she slipped in the dishwasher area of the stores kitchen. The prosecution gave evidence that four similar accidents had occurred in the same kitchen during the previous year. The company had done little to correct an obvious slip hazard. The HSE investigation concluded that the risk of slipping under even relatively low levels of wet contamination were unacceptably high. The employee’s injuries were so severe that she
spent 11 days in hospital and has been unable to work since the incident and may never work again.
- A pub chain that failed to report an accident was fined £25,000
by Reading magistrate’s court. A customer suffered injuries
when he fell through an unsupervised trap-door into the pub cellar,
sustaining lacerations and bruising. The pub did not report the incident
until the customer contacted the council. When the Environmental Health
Officer visited she found the trap-door open for a delivery without
any precautions in place to prevent further serious accidents.
- A 12-year old boy received third degree burns in a school experiment leading to a Norwich school being ordered to pay £30,000. During an experiment the boy’s shirt caught fire, the class teacher tried to beat the flames out, then removed the boy’s shirt before using a fire extinguisher instead of a fire blanket. The boy’s injuries required skin grafts and he has been left badly scarred. The school was fined for having inadequate fire risk assessment and for having inadequate refresher training in
the use of fire precautions.
- Smurfit News Press Ltd was fined a record 1 million euros following two almost identical accidents in two weeks. The first accident occurred during a paper break on a print machine, when a workers right leg became trapped between two free flowing rollers which were still spinning. The accident resulted in the employee having to have his right leg amputated below the knee. There were no safety guards in place and no written risk assessment. Two weeks later on another press, another break occurred. A worker was clearing paper from the two free flowing rollers, which were still spinning, when his left hand became trapped between the rollers, resulting in the skin being pulled off his hand. Again the machine he was working on had no safety guards and no written risk assessments. The judge criticized the company for placing the pursuit of profit over the safety of its workers.
