Company fined £60,000 following fatality
THE Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has once again urged all companies to ensure that sufficient safety procedures and risk assessments are in place to properly protect staff, particularly where mobile plant is involved.
The call was made after the prosecution last week (29 July) of John Stacey and Sons Ltd at Winchester Crown Court following an incident at the company’s Tadley site on 1 June 2007, when employee Frederick Aubrey was run over and later died from his injuries.
John Stacey and Sons Ltd, who were fined £60,000 and ordered to pay full costs of £29,061, had already pleaded guilty to section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 and regulation 3(1) of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 at an earlier hearing at Basingstoke Magistrates Court on 29 June 2009.
On 1 June 2007, Frederick Aubrey and two other employees were ‘totting’ (hand-sorting) waste at the company’s waste-transfer station in Tadley, Hampshire. A fourth worker who was helping the three men was asked by the driver of a skip loader to use a shovel loader to tip over one of the skips. The worker did so and in the process reversed over Mr Aubrey, who died five days later in hospital.
Commenting on the incident, David Bibby, HSE Inspector, said: ‘This case highlights the importance of assessing risks and putting adequate controls in place to protect pedestrians from vehicles, and the tragic consequences when this is not properly done.
‘The practice of ‘totting’ had only been going on at the company for about two weeks prior to the incident and they had not recognized that, by doing this, people were being unnecessarily exposed to the risk of vehicles moving around them with nothing to protect them.
‘This should serve as a message to all companies, and especially those in the waste industry where, unfortunately, accidents like this are all too common, to ensure that risks from workplace transport are identified and suitable measures put in place to prevent accidents.’
