Herts companies fined for dangerous practice

Date:

26 October 2012

Release No:

HSE-E-103

Two Hertfordshire companies have been prosecuted for blatantly ignoring a safety warning and continuing a dangerous working practice in clear view of a visiting inspector from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).

The inspector witnessed a forklift operator lifting a worker in a wooden platform on the blades of the machine during a visit to Connexions (UK) Plc and TV Bed Ltd, who share the same premises at Travellers Close, Welham Green, on 17 May last year.

Watford Magistrates' Court heard on 22 October that the employees were attempting to move waste materials into a skip following a recent warehouse refurbishment.

Photographs were taken that clearly showed the two workers - warehouse manager Jeff Minards, who was driving the forklift, and Paul Martin, who was on the platform - were working unsafely and risking serious injury.

This was despite HSE having served a Prohibition Notice against the companies just a month earlier, on 13 April, after heavy cases from a shipping container were unloaded in exactly the same way.

Connexions (UK) Plc and TV Bed Ltd, of Unit 3, Travellers Close, both pleaded guilty to a single breach of the Work at Height Regulations 2005. They were each fined £1,000 and ordered to pay costs totalling £3,684.

Jeff Minards, of Marne Avenue, New Southgate, London, and Paul Martin, of Hawkes Road, Witham, Essex, both pleaded a single breach of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. They were each fined £250 with individual costs of £873.

After the hearing HSE inspector Rauf Ahmed, said:

"Although nobody was injured, using a forklift in this way was an incident waiting to happen.

"The employees and the company should have both known better, especially after a Prohibition Notice had been served for the same dangerous way of working just a few weeks earlier.

"There was a clear need to develop a safe system of work and stick to it, yet that didn't happen. It is neither safe nor sensible for employees to ignore HSE advice and blatantly ignore a formal enforcement notice."

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 (a) Properly planned; (b) Appropriately supervised; and (c) 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. Section 7(a) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 states: "It shall be the duty of every employee while at work (a) to take reasonable care for the health and safety of himself and of other persons who may be affected by his acts or omissions at work."

Press enquiries

Regional reporters should call the appropriate Regional News Network press office.

Issued on behalf of the Health and Safety Executive by the Regional News Network