Factory fall leads to prosecution for Lincolnshire company

Date:

9 March 2012

Release No:

HSE/316/12

A Lincolnshire food manufacturer has been fined after a worker fell from a breadcrumb-making machine.

The 39-year-old maintenance technician from Gainsborough had climbed onto the machine at Kerry Ingredients (UK) Ltd in Carr Lane, to install a lifting beam across the top of the large vessel in order to hoist out the motor for repair.

As he leaned over the machine to tighten screws to hold the beam in place, he slipped, falling nearly three metres between the machine and the wall.

The worker, who has asked not to be named, suffered fractured ribs and a bruised coccyx in the incident, which happened on 31 March 2010. He was off work for around three weeks.

Today, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) told Lincoln magistrates that a platform should have been fitted to the machine so workers did not have to lean over the edge.

After the hearing HSE inspector Judith McNulty-Green said:

"There was no safe system of work in place when the incident happened. It could have so easily been prevented had the company taken heed of warnings from staff who had raised concerns that safe access and work areas were not provided for all high level areas of plant.

"In the days following the incident the company installed a gantry around the sides of the machine to give workers a safe platform from which to work. It is unfortunate for this gentleman that it took his fall for this to happen."

Kerry Ingredients (UK) Ltd, trading as Kerry Ingredients and Flavours, of Great Park Road, Bradley Stoke, Bristol, pleaded guilty to breaching Regulation 4(1) of the Work at Height Regulations 2005. Today, Lincoln magistrates fined the firm £4,500 and ordered it to pay costs of £5,210.

Last year more than 4,000 employees suffered major injuries after falling from height at work.

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. Regulation 4(1) of the Work at Height Regulations 2005 states: Every employer shall ensure that work at height is
   1. properly planned;
   2. appropriately supervised; and
   3. carried out in a manner which is so far as is reasonably practicable safe, and that its planning includes the selection of work equipment in accordance with regulation 7
3. Visit www.hse.gov.uk/falls for more guidance on working at height.

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