Hampshire Business Fined in Health and Safety Worker Death
It can take several years for the HSE to conclude as to whether a worker’s incident should be heard in court. It can subsequently take quite a while for the courts to make time for these cases. A delivery driver for a Hampshire company was killed in 2007, but it took until 2012 for the case to reach an end with a decision to fine the company over health and safety at work issues.
The lift manufacturer was fined due to the death of a worker making a delivery to a factory in Romsey. The 27 year old worked for a haulage company delivering pallets of sheet steel to a company. The HSE investigated the incident. The young man parked the lorry on the side of the road. A worker of the lift company worked the lift truck to unload the pallets, which weighed one tonne. While the driver was running the lift, the pallet suddenly struck the young man in the chest, trapping him against his truck.
Unfortunately, the injuries crushed his chest and he suffered internal organ failure. He died shortly after the incident happened. It was found that controls were not in place for health and safety. There were no accurate methods to protect people from moving vehicles, especially in offloading heavy items. It is certainly a case of failure of workstation risk assessments to find any issue with the moving vehicle being in proximity to people.
