Foundry in court after worker suffers multiple injuries

Date:

4 April 2013

Release No:

HSE/M/89/13

A Derbyshire foundry has been fined after an employee suffered multiple injuries when he was hit by a steel bar weighing 1.6 tonnes.

The 61-year-old from Dronfield, who has asked not to be named, was working at Padley & Venables Ltd, in Dronfield, when the nine-metre long bar, and the steel barrow it was travelling on, fell as it was being pushed from one part of the site to another by a tow truck.

He broke both legs and his pelvis, crushed his right foot and also damaged his left knee in the incident on 12 April 2011. He had to have three operations and was in hospital for ten weeks. He only recently returned to work at the company on a part-time basis.

An investigation by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) found the steel bar was not secured to the barrow, that the barrow had no brakes and that it was just being shunted by the truck rather than having a physical connection.

Derby Crown Court was told today (4 April) that the company had moved the location of the steel bars due to stock issues, which prevented them from using an overhead crane to transport them around the foundry.

The firm had designed and made its own barrows to move the steel around, but failed to monitor whether loads were strapped down or that the design of the barrows was sufficiently safe for moving this type of load.

Padley & Venables Ltd, of Callywhite Lane, Dronfield, was fined £60,000 and ordered to pay £16,419 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 Fiona Coffey said:

"The company failed to consider the risks associated with this activity. The route being taken to bring long steel bars from the forge room to the saws meant passing in close proximity to employees working the saws. Reasonable precautions could and should have been taken to ensure their safe movement.

"Instead, a man has suffered serious injuries that have had, and will continue to have, a significant impact on his quality of life."

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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