Bedding firm in court after worker's fingers severed

Date:

9 March 2012

Release No:

HSE/NW/73Downland

A Liverpool bedding firm has been prosecuted after one of its employees had three fingers and a thumb cut off in machinery.

The 32-year-old from near Kirkdale, who has asked not to be named, was trying to stop a quilt becoming entangled in a duvet-making machine when the fingers and thumb on her right hand were struck by a blade.

The machine which caused the employee's injuries

Her employer, Downland Bedding Company Ltd, was prosecuted by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) after an investigation found the injured worker had not been given suitable training, and had been able to access a dangerous part of the machine when it was still operating.

Liverpool Magistrates' Court was told the employee had been working at the Blackstock Street factory on 13 January 2011 when she noticed the quilt was going to wrap around the rollers above the cutting blade on the duvet-making machine.

She ducked under the mesh guard to pull the quilt free on the cutting section of the quilt line when the clamps that hold it in place closed, trapping her hand. A colleague heard her screaming and pressed the emergency stop buttons but they failed to prevent the blade cutting across her right hand.

Her fingers and thumb were sewn back on in surgery but it is not known whether she will ever regain full movement in her hand.

Downland Bedding Company Ltd, which manufactures duvets, pillows and mattress protectors, pleaded guilty to a breach of the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998. The company was fined £7,000 and ordered to pay £5,876 in prosecution costs on 9 March 2012.

Speaking after the hearing, Nanette Cox, the investigating inspector at HSE, said:

"The worker's usual job was to work on a sewing machine but Downland Bedding also allowed her to work on the duvet-making machine to help out colleagues, despite not having any training.

"The quilt often became jammed in the machine but there were no procedures or written instructions on how to safely remove it. This meant that workers often ducked under the mesh guard to unblock jams.

"The company should have acted to introduce a safe way of working. If it had, one of its employees would not have suffered this serious injury."

The Downland Bedding employee was one of 3,806 workers in the manufacturing industry to suffer a major injury while at work in 2010/11. Another 27 workers lost their lives. Information on improving safety is available at www.hse.gov.uk/manufacturing.

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 11(1) of the same regulations states: "Every employer shall ensure that measures are taken...which are effective 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."

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