Recycling company fined after injury on Croydon site

Date:

10 October 2012

Release No:

LSE/174/12

A recycling company has been ordered to pay a £20,000 fine by the end of the week for safety failings on a waste transfer site in Croydon after an overseas student on shift work fell four metres through a chute.

Mr Priyank Malik, 22, from India, a Business Studies student at Westminster Academy who was living in Uxbridge, was working part-time on the waste site to support himself through a post-graduate diploma.

He was injured when he fell through a chute into a waste-storage bay at the Country Waste Management site on Beddington Lane, Croydon on 15 April 2011.

Although Mr Malik suffered only minor injuries, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), which investigated, said that Country Waste Management failed to put measures in place to protect their employees and others working at height.

Westminster Magistrates’ Court heard today (10 Oct) that One51 Recycling ES UK (South) Limited, trading as Country Waste Management, had received advice in 2010 from HSE about its responsibility to control the risks of working at height.

After Mr Malik’s incident, HSE inspectors served an Improvement Notice on the company requiring it to take sufficient measures to safeguard workers from falls from height.

Inspectors say that if the company had applied a risk-based approach, identifying hazards, assessing risks and implementing robust controls to protect employees and others at the site, Mr Malik's accident could have been avoided and others at the site would not have been exposed to the risk of injury from falls.

One51 Recycling ES UK (South) Limited, of the Future Industrial Services Limited, Image Park, Acornfield Road, Kirby, Merseyside, pleaded guilty to breaching Regulation 3 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999. The firm was fined £20,000 and ordered to pay £6,485 in costs by the end of the week.

After the hearing, HSE Inspector Clare Hawkes said:

“The failure to take a systematic, risk-based approach to managing health and safety led to an employee’s fall of four metres that could have led to far more serious and even fatal injuries.

“The company should have taken action to stamp out practices like crossing the openings of chutes and walking on top of loaded containers. If work at height cannot be avoided then physical low cost and simple measures should be taken, such as erecting barriers or suitable edge protection to prevent falls from open edges. Employers should have clear site rules and ensure that they are enforced.”

HSE statistics show that more than 1,300 workers were injured in falls from height across London in 2010/11. For further information about working at height go to: www.hse.gov.uk/falls

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 3(1) of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 states: Every employer shall make a suitable and sufficient assessment of (a) the risks to the health and safety of his employees to which they are exposed whilst they are at work; and (b) the risks to the health and safety of persons not in his employment arising out of or in connection with the conduct by him of his undertaking,
3. Further HSE press releases are available at www.hse.gov.uk/press.

Press enquiries:

Katie Ellison, RNN: 0207 261 8819 or katie.ellison@co.gsi.gov.uk
HSE Out of Hours: 0151 922 1221