Huddersfield Location Fined for Health and Safety Breach
An engineer lost part of a finger in a manufacturing firm accident. The finger was lost when a test of the power press was run. This machine did not have a proper guard. The incident happened at Huddersfield in West Yorkshire, and the company has been prosecuted for health and safety breaches. The court heard the case where the injured party started work in 2010 at the firm to help debug the system. The manufacturing plant was working on producing 20,000 caps a day for whisky bottle tubes.
The second press continued to have an issue with the cap creation, thus most of the time the work was being conducted on the first press. Since the machine faulted again, the engineer went over to pull caps out of the machine with pliers. Unfortunately, it was during this time that he lost a finger. The technical manager started the press up again, not seeing that the engineer was trying to work out the machine’s issues. Power presses are extremely dangerous machines, so proper health and safety training is crucial to ensure that no injuries occur during the normal operation, when it is shut off, or when it is undergoing maintenance. The company was fined for breaching section 2(1) and ordered to pay £4,000 in fines along with £1,800 in additional costs. There are on average more than 550 major injuries in manufacturing plants such as this one each year.
