Laminate flooring firm sentenced over worker's injuries

Date:

2 December 2010

Release No:

HSE/NW/70UniversalMouldings

A laminate flooring firm has been sentenced after a worker at its Merseyside factory suffered severe injuries to his left hand.

Christopher Sillitoe now has difficulty dressing himself, and using a knife and fork, after his hand came into contact with a large circular saw at Universal Mouldings Ltd's site in Aintree on 20 August 2009.

Mr Sillitoe's hand after the incident

The company was prosecuted by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) following an investigation into the cause of the incident, which resulted in Mr Sillitoe losing sections of three fingers and breaking his thumb. The 22-year-old from Everton, needed a six-hour operation to reattach his fingers and is unlikely to ever regain full movement in his left hand.

Universal Mouldings, which employs 25 people, was fined £5,000 after admitting two health and safety offences at Liverpool Magistrates' Court on 2 December. The court heard that workers at the factory had been instructed to reach under the guard on the machine to remove the laminate material while the 0.65-metre-wide blade was still rotating.

The machine which caused Mr Sillitoe's injuries

The machine was installed in the Brookfield Drive factory in 2000 but a 27 centimetre gap beneath the guard allowed workers to reach under it. The HSE investigation found that workers were expected to remove the cut laminate from the blade to stop it being damaged, and that there had been several near-misses in the past.

Mr Sillitoe, who joined the company at the age of 16, has not had a job since the incident and will be unable to return to joinery work in the future.

Jane Carroll, the investigating inspector at HSE, said:

"Workers at Universal Moulding's factory were put at risk for more than nine years, and it was inevitable that someone would eventually suffer a serious injury.

"The machine was simply the wrong one for the job. The only way of ensuring the laminate material wasn't damaged when the blade retracted was for workers to reach under the guard to remove it.

"The company should have realised it was putting its staff in danger every day they worked on the machine, and found another way of carrying out the work. It has now installed a more suitable machine, but only after Mr Sillitoe suffered permanent injuries to his left hand."

Universal Mouldings was charged with breaching Regulation 11(1) of the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 by failing to prevent access to dangerous parts of machinery, and Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 by putting workers at risk. The company was ordered to pay £7,500 towards the cost of the prosecution in addition to the fine.

There were 25 deaths and more than 19,000 serious injuries in the manufacturing industry in Great Britain last year. Information on improving safety is available at www.hse.gov.uk/manufacturing.

Notes to editors

1. Regulation 11(1) of the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 states: "Every employer shall ensure that measures are taken...to prevent access to any dangerous part of machinery or to any rotating stock-bar, or to stop the movement of any dangerous part of machinery or rotating stock-bar before any part of a person enters a danger zone."
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. 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

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