Telford firm fined £75,000 after worker suffers serious head injury

Date:

10 May 2010

Release No:

WM195/09

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has prosecuted a Telford confectionery company after a worker's head was hit with a one tonne force.

Magna Specialist Confectioners Ltd (MSC) was fined a total of £75,000 and ordered to pay costs of £37,500 by Shrewsbury Crown Court today (10 May 2010).

The company has already pleaded guilty on 9 December 2009 at Shrewsbury Crown Court to breaching Regulation 11(1) of the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998. A previous prosecution of the company in February 2008, under the same regulation, had already led to the company being fined £25,000.

The court heard how on 22 February 2007, at Magna's site on Stafford Park Nine, Telford, an employee was attempting to wipe up a leak of refrigerant inside the interlocked safety doors of a machine on the production line. As his head went through the doors into the machine, the powered part of the machinery moved forcefully to one side, closing the gap between it and a static part of the machine to approximately 5cm (2 inches). The impact to the front of his head did not fully trap his head in the gap but luckily threw him out of the machine and prevented instant death.

The employee spent two weeks in a coma and serious head injuries have left him with a significant level of blindness and deafness, loss of taste and smell as well as suffering personality changes.

Speaking after the case, HSE investigating inspector Guy Dale said:

"It's a fundamental expectation that employees should be able to work in safety. Assessing risks and implementing controls often only requires simple, cost-effective actions to be taken.

"An operative should not have been able to get to the dangerous parts of the machine while it was working at full production speed. When the interlocked doors were opened, the production line should have been designed to stop.

"The injured man is only in his early 30s and had the promise of a healthy future but now has such permanent damage that his future prospects and employment potential are severely restricted. He has a wife and a young daughter born a few months after the incident occurred.

"The fine imposed by the Crown Court reflects that there was a previous history cataloguing systemic machinery guarding failures in the company and a lack of risk assessment leaving employees exposed to risk to their health and safety."

Notes to editors

1. The Health and Safety Executive is Britain's national regulator for workplace health and safety. It aims to reduce 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.
2. Regulation 11(1) of the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 under the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 states: "Every employer shall ensure that measures are taken which are effective:
   1. to prevent access to any dangerous part of machinery or to any rotating stock-bar; or
   2. 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. Visit http://www.hse.gov.uk for more information and other HSE press notices.

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Issued on behalf of the Health and Safety Executive by COI News & PR (West Midlands)