Engineering firm fined after worker loses finger

Date:

1 March 2013

Release No:

EM/MIDS/64

A Leicester engineering company has been fined after an employee's finger was crushed in machinery.

Benjamin Asare, 36, of Oadby, Leicester, was using a pneumatic press to insert bearings into their housings at Kaby Engineers Limited on February 2 2012, when the ram came down onto his right hand.

His index finger was crushed and had to be amputated. Due to ongoing problems related to his injuries he has not been able to return to work.

A Health and Safety Executive (HSE) investigation into the incident found that the ram of the machine was running significantly faster than it should - an issue the company had identified when it bought the machine, but had failed to rectify.

Leicester Magistrates' Court was told today (1 March) that it was Mr Asare's first morning using the machine and that he had received inadequate training and supervision.

In addition, the company failed to undertake a risk assessment of the machine and had devised a system of work that allowed workers' hands to be in the danger zone.

Kaby Engineers Limited, of Upper Charnwood Street, Leicester, was fined £10,000 and ordered to pay £5,182 in costs after pleading guilty to breaching Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974.

After the hearing HSE inspector David Lefever said:

"This incident was inevitable, yet entirely preventable. There were reasonably practical steps the company could have taken to improve the safety of the machine, such as using a two-handed control system that would have kept workers hands away from the dangerous moving parts of the machine.

"The firm should have also carried out a risk assessment, which would have highlighted the significant risk and prevented the machine being used."

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 2 (1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 states: "It shall be the duty of every employer to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare at work of all his employees."

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