Manager fined after 17-year-old trainee is injured

Date:

9 June 2010

Release No:

COISE/0906

The manager of a diving company has today been fined £2,500 for health and safety breaches that led to a teenage trainee fracturing his ankle at work.

Andrew William Steel Baillie, general manager of Sub Surface Engineering Ltd in Salterns Lane, Fareham, pleaded guilty to the charges brought by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).

Jonathan Holmes, who was 17 years old and from Worthing, was injured in the workshop of Sub Surface Engineering Ltd on 21 April 2008.

Mr Baillie had used an extension to one of the truck forks of a forklift to move a large sheet of steel. The extension had not been properly secured. As the plate was being moved both it and the extension slid off the fork and fell onto Mr Holmes, fracturing his ankle.

An investigation by HSE found that Mr Baillie had not been trained to drive a forklift truck.

Fareham Magistrates' Court heard that Mr Baillie of Osborne Road, New Milton in Hampshire pleaded guilty to contravening section 37(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974. He was fined a total of £2,500 and ordered to pay costs of £1,000.

HSE Inspector Tracey Cartwright said: "This case emphasises the responsibility that individual managers and staff have for the health and safety of their colleagues, particularly vulnerable young workers.

"Adequate planning of the lifting operation and the use of suitable equipment would have avoided this injury to a young trainee. It goes without saying that anyone driving a forklift truck should be properly trained.

"Simply spending a little time considering health and safety can stop incidents like this from happening altogether."

After the court case, Mr Holmes said: "I am happy that the general manager pleaded guilty and that he took responsibility for the incident."

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 37(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 states: Where an offence under any of the relevant statutory provisions committed by a body corporate is proved to have been committed with the consent or connivance of, or to have been attributable to any neglect on the part of, any director, manager, secretary or other similar officer of the body corporate or a person who was purporting to act in any such capacity, he as well as the body corporate shall be guilty of that offence and shall be liable to be proceeded against and punished accordingly.

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Issued on behalf of the Health and Safety Executive by COI News & PR South East