Printing firm is fined after worker is injured

Date:

26 November 2010

Release No:

COISE/26-11

An Oxfordshire printing firm has been fined after a worker was injured when part of his hand was pulled into a printing machine.

The 40-year-old employee, who asked not be named was clearing jammed booklets from a stacker machine at Bicester printers, BenhamGoodHeadPrint Limited, when the incident happened.

During the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) prosecution Banbury Magistrates Court heard the stacker machine at the firm's Launton Road premises used belts that ran over rollers to move the booklets along to be packaged for delivery.

On 4 May 2009, the worker, also from Bicester was removing some of the booklets from under one of the belts when the machine started up and caught his left thumb between a feeder belt and a roller. His thumb was pulled under the roller and then crushed and cut as the machine started up again.

The man required both internal stitches and external stitches to his badly lacerated thumb and was off work for six weeks.

The HSE investigation showed a guard was missing from the machine, which would have protected the rollers and prevented access to the moving parts. Work to use and un-jam this machine was also not properly planned. Since the incident, the company has installed a guard over the roller.

BenhamGoodHeadPrint Limited, of Chaucer Business Park, Launton Road, Bicester, pleaded guilty to breaching, Regulation 11(1) of the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 and Regulation 3(1) of the Management of Health & Safety at Work Regulations 1999. The company was fined £4,000 with costs of £3,289.

HSE Inspector, Sharron Cripps, said:

"This incident highlights the dangers associated with cleaning and maintaining printing machines. It is important when undertaking a risk assessment to consider less frequent activities such as un-jamming blockages, as in this case.

"This incident was avoidable, and had this type of work been properly planned, then this would never have happened."

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. For more information about the work of HSE, visit www.hse.gov.uk
2. Section 11(1) of the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 states: "Every employer shall ensure that measures are taken which are effective (a) to prevent access to any dangerous part of machinery or to any rotating stock-bar; or (b) to stop the movement of any dangerous part of machinery or rotating stock-bar before any part of a person enters a danger zone."
3. Regulation 3(1) of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 states "Every employer shall make a suitable and sufficient assessment of the risks to the health and safety of his employees to which they are exposed whilst they are at work."

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