Council fined £75000.00 over Crush Death

A worker was crushed to death between a forklift truck and a heavy goods vehicle at a council depot.

Plymouth City Council pleaded guilty to not ensuring the safety of its employees at the city's Crown Court on 21 November. It was fined £75,000, and full costs of £16,733 were awarded against it. The judge said the fine would have been higher except that it would have to have been paid by the taxpayer.

The court heard that on 19 February 2007, at a council waste-vehicle storage and maintenance depot in Plymouth, Rory Littley and a colleague were attempting to unload 610 wheelie bins from the back of a container lorry.

Simon Jones, the HSE inspector who investigated the incident, said the custom and practice for unloading the bins had been to lift a worker up on the forks of a forklift truck to the rear of the lorry to gain access to the strapping that was holding the bins in place.

After the doors of the container lorry were opened, Mr Littley's colleague, who was not an authorised forklift driver, lifted him up on the forks of the truck. On accelerating the vehicle to try to make the forks rise more quickly, the forklift moved forward instead of upward, crushing Mr Littley between the truck and the container lorry.

The Council said in mitigation it accepted responsibility for the incident and expressed deep remorse. Although there had been other risk assessments in place, it had not conducted one for this particular process. It had made improvements to its working practices since the incident.

The judge said there had been a failure to undertake a suitable risk assessment, failure to supervise the procedure, and failure to train employees properly.  Inspector Jones observed: "This case clearly highlights the need for all employers to assess the risks of workplace transport. In this case, there were blatant breaches of health and safety legislation. There was a clear need for a risk assessment for unloading container lorries arriving at the depot."

The inspector concluded: "If there had been a suitable and sufficient risk assessment, I am sure that this tragic accident would not have occurred and Mr Littler would still be alive today."

The landlord was fined a total of £32,000 and ordered to pay £1729, the full costs of South Derbyshire District Council, which brought the prosecution. "This was a massive fine for a sole trader," stated the Council's principal environmental health officer, Ian Moore.

The court heard that a visit to the pub by an council officer on 30 October 2007 revealed that the gas cooking range was unsafe because a control panel had been removed and food waste had built up on the gas controls. The cooker was in an "appalling" condition, the officer elaborated. "Although the landlord had had the boiler serviced a short time before, the cooking range had been isolated during the service and reconnected afterwards," he explained. "The contractor who serviced the boiler said he would have condemned the range if he had looked at it."

The officer commented: "Duty-holders should ensure that safety certification covers all gas-using devices in the kitchen, and that testing is regularly updated. This prosecution demonstrates that magistrates will not tolerate oversight as an excuse."

A householder suffered serious injuries after falling through a hatch in her hallway, which had been left open by workmen.

Perth Sheriff Court heard on 27 November that an 81-year-old woman in Stanley, near Perth, was having an oil-fired central-heating system installed in her property when the incident occurred in September 2007.

The installation was part of the Scottish Government Central Heating Programme, the management of which had been contracted to British Gas Services Ltd. Adrian Newth, trading as Perthshire Oil Heating, was carrying out the installation when he opened the hatch, which was located in the floor of the hallway. Newth left the hatch open and unguarded, and told the householder to remain in living room while he went to carry out work on another part of the property with two electricians.

However, the woman walked into the hallway to gain access to her front door and fell down the open hatch. She received serious injuries to her upper right arm and severe cuts and bruises to her back and legs.

British Gas Services was fined £2000 and ordered to pay £2700 in compensation to the householder. Newth also pleaded guilty to the same charge but, owing to his lack of means, the court decided against imposing a fine, instead ordering him to pay £300 compensation to the victim.

In mitigation, British Gas Services accepted blame for its part in the incident and admitted that the proper controls were not in place. It entered an early guilty plea and said it was very remorseful that the accident had occurred.

Newth told the court that he was not responsible for leaving the hatch open and blamed the two electricians.

HSE Principal Inspector, Jim Skilling, said: "Both a big and small company have been implicated in this accident. It is not sensible or acceptable for contractors to assume that simply telling the occupant to remain in the front room is sufficient.

"Contractors must take positive steps to prevent any incident by implementing a safe-system-of-work approach, where all holes are covered, or have barriers to ensure the safety of all persons, whether occupants or visitors. This was a wholly-preventable incident, which has greatly affected the householder, and it could very well have proved fatal."
 
The Ukrainian master of a chemical tanker has been sent to prison for two months after pleading guilty to being three times over the alcohol limit while in charge of the vessel as it headed up the River Thames towards London.

Snaresbrook Crown Court heard on 19 November that Volodymyr Gonchar, 53, was reported by the ship's pilot as appearing to be drunk while master of the Cypriot-registered tanker, 'Elousa Trikoukiotisa'. The ship was carrying liquid ammonium nitrate from Rostock in northern Germany to the UK on 4 November 2008.

Gonchar was arrested and taken to Dagenham police station, where a breath test administered by the Metropolitan Police showed that he had 103 micrograms of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath. The legal limit for seafarers is 35mcg in breath - the same as that for road users.

Bryan Hopkins, surveyor-in-charge at the Orpington Marine Office of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA), said: "Although the limit is the same as for road drivers, I cannot emphasise enough the seriousness of this situation. Captain Gonchar was in command of a vessel that had a strict 'no alcohol' policy, with 15 persons on board, carrying a dangerous cargo, and transiting one of the busiest shipping areas in the world."

The prosecution was brought by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) with legal association provided by the MCA. Gonchar breached s78(3) and s82 of the Railways and Transport Safety Act 2003 by exceeding the legal alcohol limit. The CPS did not ask for costs. Gonchar will be deported once he has served his sentence.