News in the recent Risks bulletin from Rory O’Neill’s Hazards Magazine:
Two businessmen have been jailed for the manslaughter of a worker who was crushed to death at a concrete plant. Technician Christopher Meachen, 28, was killed at the Concrete Company at Costessey, Norfolk, in November 2005. Owner Timothy Dighton, 45, and area manager Roy Burrows, 46, both pleaded guilty at Norwich Crown Court. Dighton was jailed for a year and Burrows was jailed for nine months. Concrete Company, which has a head office in Peterborough and has 13 sites employing 104 staff, also admitted a charge of manslaughter. The company was fined £75,000 and ordered to pay £89,000 in costs. Christopher Meachen died at the company’s Minimix plant after becoming caught in an unguarded slew conveyer, which carried aggregate and sand up to the hoppers where cement is manufactured. He had only worked at the plant for two months and was due to marry his fiancée, Helen Pamplin, the mother of his three children, in the summer of 2006. The court heard the company had paid ‘no regard to the safety, the livelihoods or the physical wellbeing of decent men’ and his death would not have happened if managers had invested just £2,000 in safety measures. It has since emerged that the firm slipped off the radar of the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) as director Timothy Dighton failed to inform the watchdog of the company’s existence. Judge Peter Jacobs said Dighton had ‘overall control’ of the plant where the emphasis was ‘on productivity and nothing else.’ He added: ‘He should have known it was totally unsafe and should have not allowed it to continue.’ Detective inspector Richard Graveling of Norfolk Police said: ‘These blatant breaches of health and safety, or indeed lack of any systems to address health and safety issues, can and do lead to fatal injuries, as we have seen in two cases in the last four years, and we will deal with them as major crimes. These convictions should send out a message to other employers in the area that they are fully responsible and accountable for the safety of their employees.’
Norwich Evening News BBC News Online
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