Teenage workers seriously injured after falling from height

Date:

15 June 2012

Release No:

HSE/EM/64

A Derbyshire manufacturing firm and its director have been fined after two teenage agency workers fell from a lifting platform.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) prosecuted Storetec Limited and one of its Directors after Leon Payne, 18, from Sutton in Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, broke his back in the incident on 6 April 2009 at the firm's depot on Sawpit Lane Industrial Estate in Tibshelf. His colleague (who does not wish to be named), also 18, broke both of his heels and needed pins and a metal plate put in to his feet.

Derby Crown Court heard that the teenagers were helping to put scrapped trolleys into a skip using a makeshift lifting platform designed by Storetec director Brian Crossan to fit a fork lift truck. As the platform was bringing the two workers back down to the ground, it was caught and dragged off the truck's forks. The workers and platform fell four and a half metres to the ground.

HSE's investigation found that the company had failed to ensure the health and safety of its employees, and that company director Brian Crossan had not followed guidelines and standards in the design of the platform, as the fork extensions did not fit properly into the platform. Also the plate did not have any chains or any other means to secure it to the fork lift truck and it had an open edge.

After the hearing HSE inspector Fiona Coffey said:

"These two teenagers, who were just embarking on their working lives, narrowly escaped death and have now been left with life-changing physical and psychological injuries. One has even had to abandon his plans to join his father in the asphalt industry as it is too physically demanding.

"The company should have considered if it was necessary to use a platform like this in the first place, and if it was, used something that was legal and safe - this arrangement clearly was not.

"Mr Crossan put two teenagers in a dangerous position, without thought for the consequences."

Storetec Limited, registered at Europa House, Heathcote Lane, Warwick, pleaded guilty of breaching Section 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974. Today, Derby Crown Court fined the firm £22,000 and ordered it to pay costs of £12,134 and a £15 victim surcharge.

Mr Crossan also pleaded guilty to breaching Regulation 5(1) of the Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998, and was fined £3,500 and ordered to pay costs of £7,866 and a £15 victim surcharge.

Last year more than 6,300 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. Section 3(1) states: It shall be the duty of every employer to conduct his undertaking in such a way as to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that persons not in his employment who may be affected thereby are not thereby exposed to risks to their health or safety.
3. Regulation 5(1) of the Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998, states: Every employer shall ensure that lifting equipment for lifting persons-
   1. subject to sub-paragraph (b), is such as to prevent a person using it being crushed, trapped or struck or falling from the carrier;
   2. is such as to prevent so far as is reasonably practicable a person using it, while carrying out activities from the carrier, being crushed, trapped or struck or falling from the carrier;
   3. subject to paragraph (2), has suitable devices to prevent the risk of a carrier falling;
   4. is such that a person trapped in any carrier is not thereby exposed to danger and can be freed."
4. Visit www.hse.gov.uk/falls for more guidance on working at height.

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