Court Fines Company after Employee Suffers Burns Due to Unsafe Equipment
The HSE has prosecuted A1 Rewinds Ltd. under Regulation 5(1) of the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 following an incident on its premises, which left an employee with severe burns.
A fine of £2,000 and costs of £1,500 were subsequently imposed on the company by Birmingham Magistrates’ Court, after it pleaded guilty to breaching health and safety laws.
The unfortunate incident took place as the employee was working beneath a vehicle when a fire broke out because of highly flammable oxy-acetylene leaking from a welding hose. In an HSE investigation that followed the incident the equipment was found to be not maintained for the last 28 years.
The HSE has now warned all employers to maintain their equipments properly and thus provide their employees with safe, risk-free working conditions, failing which they would be facing strict action.
The investigating officer for the HSE, Pam Folsom, said after the verdict that in this case the hose was in an extremely bad shape. It had in fact been shortened due to repeated bends and splits, thus allowing the dangerous gas to leak out.
The thought of a man facing a fire due to a gas cloud while he is stuck beneath a vehicle is horrifying, she said. She added that the company was directly responsible for the poor state of the equipment and that all employers need to learn from this incident and provide their employees with risk free work environments.
Make sure that your company is not in the dark when it comes to new health and safety regulations. The other way to keep up-to-date is to make sure that you take advantage of the nebosh training services operated by reputable companies such as Workplace Law.
