New law introduces stiffer penalties

As reported in the Risks Newsletter 378…

The Health and Safety (Offences) Bill became law on 16 October, when it received Royal assent. The Bill, put forward by Labour MP Keith Hill cleared it last hurdle earlier that month, when it passed a third reading in the House of Lords. Under the new legislation, the Health and Safety (Offences) Act 2008, the maximum fine in magistrates’ courts will be raised to £20,000 for most offences and imprisonment will be made an option for a wider range of breaches. The Act, which applies throughout the UK, makes most offences triable either way’, which in effect means unlimited fines. TUC head of safety Hugh Robertson said the realising the benefits of the new law would require the courts to treat safety offences as serious crimes.

The TUC welcomes the fact that this bill has finally made it on to the statute book,’ he said. ‘The need to increase fines was first recognised by the government over eight years ago and trade unions have been campaigning hard for stronger penalties to be available for those who are convicted of criminally putting the health or safety of their workforce at risk.’ He added, however, ‘these increased penalties will only make a difference if courts actually impose fines that act as a meaningful deterrent rather than just a slap on the wrist as is so often the case today.’ Health and safety minister Lord McKenzie said: ‘These changes will insure that sentences can now be more easily set at a level to deter businesses that do not take their health and safety management responsibilities seriously and further encourage employers and others to comply with the law.’ The minister added: ‘Furthermore, by extending the £20,000 maximum fine to the lower courts and making imprisonment an option, more cases will be resolved in the lower courts and justice will be faster, less costly and more efficient. Jail sentences for particularly blameworthy health and safety offences committed by individuals, can now be imposed reflecting the severity of such crimes, whereas there were more limited options in the past.’

• DWP news release. Health and Safety (Offences) Bill [pdf].

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Two companies fined £44,500 after man paralysed in fall at work

HSE Press Release:

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is urging employers to ensure safe working at height after a man was left paralysed from the waist down following a fall of two storeys at a construction site in central London.

T. J. Myles & Co (Contractors) Ltd of Ickenham, Hillingdon, was found guilty of breaching section 2 (1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974. They have been fined £20,000 and ordered to pay costs of £7,339.20 at City of London Magistrates Court.

Crispin & Borst Ltd, of Watford, was found guilty of breaching section 3 (1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974. They have been fined £10,000 and ordered to pay costs of £7,155.20 at City of London Magistrates Court.

HSE Inspector Lisa Chappell said: “The risks of working at height are well-known, yet falls from height remain a common cause of death in the construction industry.  The victim suffered serious injuries, which have left him paralysed, but this incident could well have resulted in his death.  This case again highlights the absolute necessity for the creation and implementation of a site-specific assessment of work at height that is fit for purpose in order to identify appropriate measures to prevent injury.”

On the 11 January 2007, the victim involved in the incident, was working on a construction site at Grosvenor Street, London W1, where two buildings were being converted into one. A steel structure was being installed to support the building and being lifted into place by a hoist from the ground floor.

Whilst part of the structure was being moved it became stuck and when freed moved very quickly out of place. The individual was struck and dragged through a hole in the floor, falling 7.3 metres down two storeys to land on the ground floor and as a result is now paralysed from the waist down.

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Following death of a man in Smethwick HSE warns of the dangers of working at height

HSE Press Release:

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is warning of the importance of carrying out risk assessments and implementing safe systems for working at height following the prosecution of a company and one of its employees after an incident in which an elderly man died.

Pervez Mohammed Iqbal, was (on Friday 21st November) ordered, by Wolverhampton Crown Court, to pay £15,000 in fines, with £2,800 costs after earlier pleading guilty to breaching Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974. This case followed a Police and HSE joint investigation into a fatal incident on 20 April 2007.

The court heard that, on that day, Mr Satnam Singh, 62, fell 5-6 metres (16-20 feet) through a fragile rooflight whilst preparing to undertake work on the roof of a textiles factory in Smethwick. Work had already been undertaken to replace plastic rooflights following a burglary at the site and further work was being undertaken by Kundi Electrical to repair recurring roof leaks. Mr Singh was working under the direction of Pervez Mohammed Iqbal who was carrying out the work for Kundi Electrical.

In undertaking this roofing work, equipment and building materials were being carried across roofs, which are well known in roofing and building industries to be fragile, when Mr Singh fell through and died later in hospital from the injuries sustained.

The roof of the textiles factory was being accessed up a ladder and across several different types of pitched roofs of several factory units and an adjacent engineering company, below which employees were working.

At an earlier hearing, on 11th February 2008, Surjit Singh Kundi trading as Kundi Electrical, from a base in Oldbury, had been ordered, by West Bromwich Magistrates, to pay £25,000 in fines, with £2,301 costs after pleading guilty to breaching the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974. This case followed the same investigation into the fatal incident on 20 April 2007.

HSE Inspector Georgina Speake said:

“The roofs which were being repaired and those being used for access were totally unprotected, exposing anyone crossing them to the most serious risks.  Iqbal had failed to undertake a suitable and sufficient risk assessment to identify the risks associated with the work being undertaken. Findings should have been passed on to employees so that they were aware of the hazards and then measures needed to minimise the risks put in place. The risk was wholly predictable, therefore avoidable. Such falls remain one of the biggest killers in the construction industry and last year, across the country, 45 people died after falling while working at height.

“Many incidents can be avoided if employers identify a safe way of tackling a job, provide all necessary protective equipment and ensure that workers or casual employees are fully trained and properly supervised. In this instance there were a number of optional methods and routes of access which would have greatly reduced the risk. Precautions that need to be taken to prevent falls are often simple and there is free guidance readily available to help employers take the right action.”

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Update to ‘Prosecution Results’

The Prosecution Results section at HandS, containing news of prosecutions, fines and compensation payouts in a wide range of trades and industries, has been updated this weekend to include a number of new cases from the period of February 2008 to July 2008.  The new additions begin on page 15 of the section.

The Prosecution Results section is provided for your research on related issues. The items may be helpful to you in presentations to safety committee or managerial meetings, or in your efforts to illustrate points and progress issues in your workplace. They could assist you in elaborating the need for thorough risk assessments, or for training that has not taken place. Some cases may also be of interest to solicitors handling cases with similar circumstances. The section is fully searchable on key words.

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New Prosecution Results section

A new section has been added to HandS Health & Safety Resources that may be of interest to you.

Prosecution Results contains examples of prosecutions, fines and compensatory payouts in a number of trades, settings and circumstances, and they are provided as an adjunct to your research on related issues. They may be helpful to you in presentations to safety committee or managerial meetings, or in your efforts to illustrate points and progress issues in your workplace. For example, they could be of help to you in elaborating the need for thorough risk assessments, or for training that has not taken place. More recent cases may also be of interest to solicitors handling similar cases. The section is fully searchable (keywords) and will be updated as often as possible.

The cases have been compiled from issues of Risks newsletter and my thanks go to Rory O’Neill, editor of Hazards magazine, and to Hugh Robertson, Senior Health & Safety Officer for the Trades Union Congress (TUC) for their kind permission to reprint the material.

A new link button to the section is located on the HandS home page, on the left side near the top.

Thank you for your continued interest and support, as HandS approaches it’s 5th year on the Net.

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Vibration permanently harms man’s hands

As reported by Rory O’Neill in the Risks Newsletter:

A 24-year-old crack tester from Doncaster who says he was forced out of his job after vibrating tools permanently damaged his hands has received a £30,000 compensation settlement. Unite member Dean Grice was employed by MSI Forks Ltd, a firm making forks for forklift trucks. He had worked for the firm since 1997. His job required him to grind out defects on the forks using pencil grinders and angle grinders – tools which vibrated in his hands. As a result, he developed hand arm vibration syndrome (HAVS – also known as vibration white finger) – a painful condition which causes the fingers to go white and numb – as well as carpal tunnel syndrome, which causes numbness, tingling and pain in the fingers. Mr Grice explained: ‘It was my GP who told me that I had symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome and he referred me to the Doncaster Royal Infirmary. Sadly my employer refused to re-deploy me to a job where I wouldn’t be exposed to vibration so I had no choice but to resign.’ Unite regional secretary Davey Hall said: ‘This is not the first time that an employee of MSI Forks Ltd has suffered from hand arm vibration syndrome. We hope that it will now force them to ensure that correct health and safety procedures are in place.’ The two conditions are commonly associated with work with vibrating tools, and have been the subject of a series of recent industrial disease payouts.

Thompsons Solicitors news release

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Company prosecution after fall from roof

From the Health and Safety Executive press office:

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is warning companies whose business involves working at height to ensure they provide suitable safety equipment and have appropriate procedures in place before allowing their staff to work in potentially dangerous situations.

It follows the prosecution of a North Wales roofing contractor in relation to an incident where one of his employees sustained serious injuries, and later died, after a 25ft fall through a skylight on the roof of the Comet store in Wrexham.

Paul Christopher Alker, 33, required surgery for a broken collar bone after the fall, just days after starting work with Wrexham Roof Services Ltd. He died shortly after his operation.

In a prosecution brought by the Crown Prosecution Service, Steven Christopher Smith, director of Wrexham Roof Services Ltd, Rhostyllen, Wrexham, pleaded guilty to manslaughter, a charge under the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 and a further charge of committing acts intending to pervert the course of justice. Smith was jailed for a total of two and a half years following a hearing at Mold Crown Court.

HSE assisted North Wales Police on the investigation into the incident, and HSE inspector Debbie John said it was not acceptable for employers to cut corners.

“Mr Smith clearly knew that he should have provided safety harnesses for people working on roofs, but chose only to do this after the incident which led to the death of Mr Alker.

“Figures show that in 2006/07, 45 people have died and more than 3000 suffered a serious injury after a fall from height in the workplace. It remains the most common cause of fatal injury in the workplace, but the risk does not just apply to those working at great height. Many fatal and serious injuries are caused by people falling from below head height too.

“Health and Safety rules are not there to inconvenience employers or to wrap employees or others in cotton wool – they are in place to ensure incidents like this are prevented, and the risk of this incident happening would have been significantly reduced had appropriate safety equipment been provided.”

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£237,000 pay out to injured electrician

An electrician whose hand became crushed in a machine while working at Heathrow airport has won £237,000 in the wake of a Unite-backed legal claim.

Unite member Eric Palmer, from Mold in Clwyd suffered agonising injuries and shock in August 2004 when his hand got caught in a machine which separates concrete and water from sand and aggregate mix.

He had warned his line manager that he wasn’t trained for the repair job but his pleas went unheeded.

The injuries have never properly healed despite extensive medical treatment and surgery and still give him nightmares.

He said: “I suffered physical and mental injuries as a result of the accident. Even the simple things which previously I would have taken in my stride, like building a pond in the garden which has stood unfinished for three years, are difficult, if not impossible. Even now I find it difficult to sleep and have nightmares about the machine and what happened.”

Solicitor Ken Jones said Eric Palmer’s employer – construction company Laing O’Rourke – had failed on several counts. He was clearly put in a position of danger and was given no guidance whatsoever as to how to handle the machine. Eric himself recognised that attending to the machine wasn’t the right thing to do. Unfortunately he paid a very high price for agreeing to do it.”
– from the Unite @ctivist Newsletter

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HSE Prosecutions Database

After a lapse of almost a year, HSE is again posting prosecutions. They have begun inputting cases with hearing dates after November 1, 2006, and say they will update new cases weekly as they are reported. “In view of the volume of prosecutions now posted, we are not inputting previous cases. There will therefore be a gap in our database from a hearing date of 24 January 2006 until November 1st. Anyone not finding a case which may have been heard between January and November 2006, should therefore try searching the HSE Prosecutions database.”

Since relaunching the Prosecution database in January 2007, after a break of around a year, the HSE appears to have changed the format of the case numbers. So, for entries with a hearing date before the 24 January 2006, you should search the database with the defendants name, instead of a case number that you may have, if you desire to check details for yourself.

News From HASTAM, at http://www.hastam.co.uk/hsnews/

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Workplace noise still a health threat

News in the recent Risks bulletin:

Workers, some exposed recently, are still developing noise-induced hearing loss, recent compensation cases show. The noise levels in the Leeds factory of Depuy International, where Alan Gosling was part of a team making knee and hip replacements, has permanently damaging his hearing. Now the 39-year-old has been awarded £6,500 in compensation for the condition and been transferred to another department at the firm. He worked as a fitter and polisher between 1996 and 2006 and worked on spindles to grind and finish surgical implant components. The spindles – and shot blast machines around 10 metres away – generated high levels of noise when in use. However, until 2001, ear protection was not mandatory. Trade union Unite’s Amicus section, working with Thompsons Solicitors, secured the payout for Mr Gosling. Sheffield shopfitter Peter Nelson, 65, has been awarded £12,000 compensation pay out after he contracted noise induced hearing loss caused by noise from power tools whilst working for Plumb Furniture Systems Limited. As a result of being exposed to noise from circular saws, routers, sledge hammers, brakers and drills Mr Nelson developed hearing loss which is irreversible and makes it difficult for him to follow conversations. He now has to wear a hearing aid. Mark Allen, from law firm Irwin Mitchell, who represented Mr Nelson, said he ‘was never warned or advised about the dangers of noise induced hearing loss or was provided with any protective equipment. This case highlights the importance of health and safety policies. Employers have a duty of care to their staff which includes ensuring full protective equipment is provided so workers’ exposure to risk is kept to a minimum.’

Thompsons Solicitors news release. Irwin Mitchell Solicitors news release. Yorkshire Evening Post.

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