Health and safety prosecutions
We report on recent prosecutions relating to health and safety failings.
Cambridgeshire school fined after loft fall
An independent school near Huntingdon has been prosecuted after a teenager was injured when she fell from a loft space to the swimming pool changing rooms below.
Pool attendant Stacey Paine, 19, and the swimming pool manager were retrieving paperwork stored in a loft above the Kimbolton School changing rooms. To reach the documents she walked along a beam of the unboarded loft but lost her footing. She fell two and a half metres on to the tiled floor below narrowly missing a benched area.
Stacey, from St Neots suffered a fractured wrist in the fall on 20 April 2010. Read more …
Firm pays more than £100,000 after workers engulfed in fireball
An international packaging film manufacturer was fined £90,000 after two workers suffered life-threatening injuries when they were engulfed by a ‘fireball’ at a factory in Cumbria.
Innovia Films Ltd was prosecuted by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) following an investigation into the cause of the fire at the plant in Wigton on 13 September 2006.
Carlisle Crown Court heard that on the previous day there was a small fire in a circuit compartment of an electrical distribution box at the factory. Workers put out the flames with a CO2 extinguisher and then re-routed the power supply to an undamaged switch so that cooling equipment, which is used to maintain production quality, could continue to operate.
The following day, an engineer and an apprentice were asked to plate over the damaged circuit compartment to prevent it from being accessed until it had been properly inspected. Read more …
Bread company fined after man died from fall
A Barnet-based wholesaler has been fined after a man died of injuries sustained when he fell from a stepladder.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) prosecuted Ovenpride Wholesale Ltd and manager Amjad Mahmood for failing to provide a safe system of work which, led to the death of handyman Rocco Carofalo.
The City of London Magistrates’ Court heard on the morning of 22 April 2009 Mr Carofalo, who was employed as a casual handyman at Ovenpride’s Finchley Rd Bakery, was asked to build shelving in the storeroom by the site manager.
During the morning Mr Carofalo had been seen standing on a stepladder while working on the shelving using tools and materials provided by Ovenpride. At around midday he was found lying on the floor bleeding from a severe head wound, with the stepladder beside him.
He died as a result of his injuries on 23 June. Read more …
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