A Staffordshire animal rendering and food waste recycling company has been fined £660,000 after a worker died as he tried to fix an industrial cooker.

Self-employed contractor Mark Bullock, 50, of Milton, Stoke on Trent, was carrying out repairs inside the cooker at John Pointon & Sons Ltd when the incident happened on 5 November 2011.

While he was inside, steam from elsewhere in the system fed into the area where he was working. He was badly scalded and died in hospital the following day from his injuries.

An investigation by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) found Mr Bullock was allowed to enter the cooker without the proper precautions being taken. The company had not properly considered the risks of entering the cooker, had failed to put in place a safe system of work, and did not competently manage the work as it was taking place.

Stafford Crown Court heard that in 2004 another employee was killed at the same site when he entered a confined space without proper precautions being taken.

On Monday 29 June 2015, John Pointon & Sons Ltd, of Bones Lane, Cheddleton, Leek, was fined £660,000 and ordered to pay a further £187,632 in costs after pleading guilty to breaching Section 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974.

After sentencing HSE inspector Wayne Owen said: “The cookers in operation at the company form the core part of the business. Steam and hot vapours getting into the cookers from other connected pieces of equipment is foreseeable, and precautions should have been taken to ensure all avenues which had the potential to allow steam to be fed back into the cooker had been suitably isolated.

“John Pointon and Sons Ltd failed to do this and it cost Mark Bullock his life.

“Work in confined spaces can be extremely dangerous, which John Pointon & Sons Ltd were fully aware of having already had a fatality at the site. Companies must identify what measures should be taken to ensure the safety of their workforce. I would urge any company that carries out work in confined spaces to double check their procedures.”

Mr Bullock’s partner of 27 years, Christine Knowles said: “Mark had a great passion for life. In some ways he never grew up. He loved fairgrounds and holidays and loved to sing and dance. He had an extremely generous nature and a wicked sense of humour.

“To die that young is a tragedy. He was so fit and healthy. In 2009 we moved to a beautiful house on the canal. He built a balcony and bought a boat and had hoped to retire early. We had started to really look forward to retirement and lazy sunny days on or near the water.

“Mark’s friends put some money together and have had a tribute put up at the site – a tree and a stone with the inscription “How difficult can it be?” He was a practical man and used to say that a lot.

“The company should have made sure that Mark was safe. Every company should do the same for their workers. Mark was a great man. He touched many people’s hearts and broke mine when he died.”

Notes to Editors:

1. The Health and Safety Executive is Britain’s national regulator for workplace health and safety. It aims to reduce work-related death, injury and ill health. It does so through research, information and advice; promoting training; new or revised regulations and codes of practice; and working with local authority partners by inspection, investigation and enforcement. www.hse.gov.uk^[1]
2. Section 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 states: It shall be the duty of every employer to conduct his undertaking in such a way as to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that persons not in his employment who may be affected thereby are not thereby exposed to risks to their health or safety.

A recycling company in South Devon has been sentenced for serious safety breaches after a worker was killed after likely being thrown from a six-tonne dumper truck.

Ben Sewell, 30, from Dartmouth, was found lying on his back on a bank, a few metres behind the overturned dumper, on a sloping dirt track at Dittisham Recycling Centre on 21 September 2012. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) prosecuted the firm after an investigation discovered that Mr Sewell, who was single, had not been properly trained by his employer to use the vehicle. The company had also failed to properly enforce the wearing of seat belts fitted to the dumpers used by Ben and other staff.

Plymouth Crown Court heard that HSE’s investigation uncovered a catalogue of dangers at the Dittisham Recycling site and served a total of eight Prohibition Notices on the company preventing its use of various plant and machinery until adequate safety measures were taken.

The court was told that on the day of the incident Mr Sewell was using the dumper to take loads of oversized material from one part of the centre to another. The extensive site sits in a steeply sided valley. At one point he stopped at the top of the site to deal with a customer before setting off in his empty dumper down to the bottom of the site along the main dirt track.

The customer noted the truck was going at speed and that Mr Sewell was not wearing the seat belt. Minutes later, a colleague at the bottom of the site noticed smoke rising from a section of the dirt track above where he was working and he could just see the overturned dumper. He rushed to the scene and found Ben lying on his back at the side of the track some ten metres from the dumper truck.

Paramedics later confirmed he had been fatally injured.

HSE found a series of safety failings with other dumper trucks, a tracked excavator and with processing machinery for rock crushing and screening. Tipping operations were also unsafe and some of the roadways about the site were inadequately protected. Inspectors issued two Improvement Notices requiring safety changes to the site’s roadways and tipping safety measures.

Having taken into account the current financial circumstances of the defendant Company, the Judge – His Justice, Judge Dingemans ordered Dittisham Recycling Centre Ltd, of Dittisham Cross, near Dartmouth, South Devon, to pay a fine of £50,000 and also ordered them to pay £25,000 towards the prosecutions costs (all payable over the next 5 years) for breaching Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974. The company had pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing.

After the case, HSE inspector David Cory said: “Ben’s death was entirely preventable. The lack of competent training, poor monitoring and inadequate supervision of staff added up to a fatal combination. Although there were no witnesses, his injuries were consistent with being thrown from the truck.

“Dumper trucks are inherently unstable and dangerous machines to operate and the company had not enforced the necessary rules to make sure they were driven safely, including the full and proper use of the seat lap belts. Just under a third of all fatalities in the waste sector over the last five years have involved vehicles.

“If a vehicle has a roll over bar fitted to it the driver will also always need to use the seat belt – the safety place in an overturn is securely in the driver’s seat, protected by the roll over bar and seat belt. Many people think they can jump clear but this is wrong. Roll overs just happen too fast and they get injured or killed by the vehicle as the try to jump clear.

“Dittisham Recycling knew about the importance of having staff competently trained. It had used an external trainer for staff in the past but had not done so for Ben or one of his colleagues at the time. Instead they relied upon in-house verbal and basic hands-on training, which was inadequate.

“Had Dittisham Recycling ensured staff were sufficiently trained, equipment was properly used and the legally-required and frankly common sense safety rules enforced – especially for dumpers – then Ben Sewell would most likely be still be alive.”

“Ben’s mother Anna Sewell had previously told the HSE that ‘Ben was our only son and his death has left a massive hole in our lives – our house was always full of life. From the day of his death to the day of his funeral life was just a blur. It was all very distressing’. Our memories of Ben will never go away.”

Visit http://www.hse.gov.uk/waste/safety-topic.htm for guidance on safety in the waste industry.

Notes to Editors:

1. The Health and Safety Executive is Britain’s national regulator for workplace health and safety. It aims to reduce work-related death, injury and ill health. It does so through research, information and advice; promoting training; new or revised regulations and codes of practice; and working with local authority partners by inspection, investigation and enforcement. www.hse.gov.uk
2. Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 states: “It shall be the duty of every employer to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare at work of all his employees.”
3. HSE news releases are available at http://press.hse.gov.uk/.

HSE will today remove the carriages involved in the incident on ‘The Smiler’ rollercoaster on 2 June and transport them to the Health and Safety Laboratory in Buxton for further analysis.

The investigation into the incident continues and HSE inspectors remain on site. They have served a Prohibition notice on the rollercoaster stopping its use until action is taken to deal with the cause of the failure.

Neil Craig, Head of Operations for HSE in the Midlands said:

“The Notice is specific to the ‘Smiler’ ride and does not affect other rides at the park. HSE expects the park operator to apply any early learning from the incident to wider risk management at the site.

“The decision about when to re-open the Park is for the owners to make.”

(Ends)

1. HSE has a range of enforcement powers, ranging from verbal and written advice, Improvement Notices, Prohibition Notices and prosecutions under various health and safety laws in England and Wales
2. More information about enforcement notices is available here: http://www.hse.gov.uk/enforce/enforcementguide/notices/notices-intro.htm^[1]
3. The Health and Safety Laboratory is the research arm of the Health and Safety Executive. It supplies science-based research, technological support, and incident investigation

A steel foundry has been sentenced after a South Yorkshire worker was killed when he was struck in the face by a shard from an abrasive disc that exploded from a hand-held grinding machine.

Stuart Stead, 49, of Mexborough, Doncaster, was using the hand-held grinder while he worked on a casting at H.I. Quality Steel Castings Ltd in Forncett Street, Sheffield, on 7 March 2012.

As he used the high-frequency machine, the disc fitted to it suddenly exploded catapulting fragments across his workbay. A shard went straight through Mr Stead’s visor and hit him in the mouth.

Mr Stead, a father of three grown-up children, received fatal injuries and was pronounced dead at the scene.

The incident was investigated by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), which today 11 May prosecuted H.I. Quality Steel Castings at Sheffield Crown Court. The company pleaded guilty to a serious safety breach at an earlier court appearance (9 Feb).

HSE found the abrasive disc was nine inches in diameter although the grinder had a maximum permissible tool diameter of only two inches unless guarded. It was also attached to the grinder using a non-proprietary tool. In addition the disk was rated for 6650 rpm but the grinder was running at 12,000 rpm.

The grinder had no guard so as it exploded, the pieces were forcibly expelled across the bay, one ending up some ten metres away.

Two of Mr Stead’s work colleagues, who were nearby, said later they had heard a loud bang and one turned to see him collapse to the floor. They ran to his aid and saw the visor broken and the piece of disk in Mr Stead’s mouth.

HSE said the excessive speed of the grinder coupled with the added load caused by the non-standard attachment had put stresses on the disc way beyond its capacity, resulting in its catastrophic failure.

The court was told that HSE’s investigation had uncovered a number of previous incidents when discs had come off grinders. However, none of these had been mentioned in monthly minutes of the company’s health and safety meetings for the site.

These included:

• In 2011 a 230mm diameter disc suffered a blade disintegration and part went through the foundry roof
• A sand disc attached to a grinder using an adaptor shattered and put a hole in a bench and shattered a light fitting 30 feet up
• A disc flew off a grinder, being used by Mr Stead, which was never found
• A cutting disc bounced off the stomach of another worker.
• And in the week before the fatality – a lump came off a disc Mr Stead was using and shot down the workshop hitting another worker under the eye.

HSE said H.I. Quality Steel Castings Ltd had allowed the use of unsafe combinations of parts with the grinders, many of which were unguarded. Despite some initial training in abrasive wheels, employees did not understand rotation speeds of machines versus discs and had free access to a wide variety of them, contributing to the prevalence of unsafe combinations.

The company also failed to monitor disc/grinder use so unsafe practices were not picked up and near miss incidents were not properly investigated.

H.I. Quality Steel Castings Ltd of Foundry Street, Whittington Moor, Chesterfield, was fined £150,000 and ordered to pay £24,000 in costs after admitting breaching section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974.

After the hearing, HSE inspector Jill Thompson said:

“This was a horrific incident that devastated Mr Stead’s wife, his children and wider family. It is also, tragically, one that could have been avoided had the company focused on its responsibility to ensure the safety of their employees.

“The safety of Mr Stead and others was not ensured while using hand-held grinders. If monitoring and supervision had been provided to ensure necessary precautions were followed, this tragic incident would not have happened.

“The near-misses should have been a big warning flag to H.I. Quality Steel Castings that there was a serious risk that a worker could be severely injured or killed.

“Employers must make sure that all work involving grinding is assessed for safety to make sure that poor or potentially dangerous practices are removed.”

Visit http://www.hse.gov.uk for free guidance on safety in use of abrasive wheels.

Notes to Editors:

The Health and Safety Executive is Britain’s national regulator for workplace health and safety. It aims to reduce work-related death, injury and ill health. It does so through research, information and advice; promoting training; new or revised regulations and codes of practice; and working with local authority partners by inspection, investigation and enforcement. www.hse.gov.uk

Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 states: “It shall be the duty of every employer to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare at work of all his employees.”

HSE news releases are available at http://press.hse.gov.uk/.

Mark Hewitt, a construction client from Birmingham, was fined £3000 and ordered to pay £1255.30 in costs at Sandwell Magistrates Court for failing to properly plan or manage construction work.

HSE inspected the site after a member of the public raised concerns over work taking place next to a public pavement. During the inspection it was clear there was a risk of materials falling from the first floor level onto the pavement and the street, and there were no fall prevention measures in place to protect workers on the site.

HSE Inspector Chris Gregory said:

“As the client for the work, Mr Hewitt should have ensured the appropriate measures were in place in order to plan, manage and monitor the project. He was informed of his duties by his advisors, but failed to act.

Mr Hewitt had a duty to ensure that the safety of those working on site and those members of the public, passing by, were not put at risk, he failed on both counts”

Mark Hewitt of Manor Lane in Halesowen, being a client as defined by the Construction (Management and Design) Regulations 2007, was found guilty of breaching Regulation 9(1) of said regulations.

Notes to Editors:

1. The Health and Safety Executive is Britain’s national regulator for workplace health and safety. It aims to reduce work-related death, injury and ill health. It does so through research, information and advice, promoting training, new or revised regulations and codes of practice, and working with local authority partners by inspection, investigation and enforcement. www.hse.gov.uk^[1]

2. Further HSE news releases are available at www.press.hse.gov.uk ^[2]

3. Falls from height are responsible for around a third of workplace deaths every year, with 25 people losing their lives in 2012/13. For further information, go to http://www.hse.gov.uk/work-at-height/index.htm