Haulage company sentenced for health and safety breaches
A haulage company located in Grimsby was sentenced for safety breaches after an incident with an employee. The employee was killed due to a falling row of steel coils. The coils collapsed a bit like dominos, crushing him under five tonnes of weight. The incident occurred at a warehouse in Immingham Docks. As with any incident, the HSE was brought in to conduct health and safety audits in order to determine the cause of the worker’s death. They found that the company was at fault for the incident in 2010, killing Alan Burr. Burr worked at the warehouse as a forklift truck driver and warehouseman. The court heard that the employee was stacking the coils in four and five stacks with a gap between them. The coils were five feet in diameter, each weighing one tonne.
There was a stack with damaged wrapping. This is why he was standing in between two of the coil stacks. He was 52 years old at the time of the incident. Burr worked at the factory for 20 years, yet it was a matter of proper health and safety training for these particular coils. The coils were introduced into the factory in 2009, meaning they were much different from the coils Burr had been trained on during his 20 years. ABC, the haulage company, was fined for two charges of safety violations. They owe £25,000 in fines and £20,000 in additional court costs. The incident might have been avoided had new training been offered according to the investigator on scene.
