Council fined £50,000 after refuse worker injured

South Lanarkshire Council has been fined £50,000 for health and safety breaches after a refuse worker suffered ‘life changing’ injuries when he was trapped between the lifting hoist and the side of a glass-collection vehicle.

On 13 January 2011, Derek Maitland, 37, of Castlemilk, Glasgow, was driving one of the council’s glass-collection vehicles when the side lifter became jammed in an upright position.

Yesterday, (18 December), Hamilton Sheriff Court heard that Maitland unplugged the side lifter’s pendant control unit and took it into the vehicle’s cab to dry out, which had reportedly been common practice by drivers when unexpected stoppages had occurred.

Leaving the engine running, Maitland returned to reconnect the pendant control unit, but as power was delivered to the mechanism on reconnection, the hoist activated and lowered, trapping him by his torso against the vehicle.

Maitland required ‘extensive surgery’ to repair damaged arteries and had to have most of his colon and small bowel removed following the incident in Glen Turret, East Kilbride.

He can no longer eat and digest food as normal and requires to be fed intravenously. However, in spite of these serious and life-changing injuries, he has returned to work.

Council failed to provide a ‘safe system of work’

The incident was investigated by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), which determined that the incident occurred as a result of a combination of ‘inadequate risk assessment, the lack of a safe system of work, and a failure to provide adequate information, instruction, supervision and training’.

Although the council’s safe system of work stated that employees should not attempt to repair faulty equipment (such as pendant controllers) and that any defects should be reported, it failed to specifically mention the removal and reconnection of the pendant controllers. It was also found that the council was aware of the practice of removing pendant controllers to dry them out.

Following the case, HSE Inspector Eve Macready said: “Mr Maitland is clearly fortunate not to have died as a result of this incident and the surgery that was required was truly lifesaving. He has, however, been left with serious, life-changing injuries, and only time will tell what complications may arise in relation to his medical condition.

“South Lanarkshire Council understood the risks of working with such vehicles, but although supervisors were aware of this developing practice relating to the removal of the pendant controllers, they did nothing to discourage it. The systems of work in place should have triggered activity to stop this practice or review existing arrangements.

“This was combined with insufficient training and instruction for employees involved in operating these vehicles, and South Lanarkshire Council failed in its duty to protect its employees.”

The council has since carried out a review and reportedly amended its system of work to prevent a recurrence of the incident.

Berryman Glass Recycling fined for worker injury

The South Lanarkshire case comes just days after Reuse Collections Ltd was fined £5,000 and ordered to pay £3,638 in full costs after a worker had his arm crushed when it was drawn into the unguarded danger zone of a machine.

Wakefield Magistrates’ Court heard that on 15 June 2012, an 18-year-old temporary worker had been working at Reuse Collections Ltd (which trades as Berryman), in Pontefract, when he was asked by a supervisor to clean a machine used to separate glass from waste material.

The machine was running and his left hand and arm was drawn in between a rotating metal drum and a moving conveyor belt.

The teenager suffered a fractured upper arm and surgeons needed to use bone from his hip and metal rods to rebuild his arm.

HSE investigated and found the machine had been ‘totally unguarded’, providing ready access by workers to ‘dangerous moving parts’. In addition, it was found Reuse Collections Ltd had no work system to make sure the machine was ‘isolated and safely locked off’ before cleaning was undertaken.

HSE told the court that rather than fitting an effective guard enclosing the dangerous parts of the machine, the company relied on employees to carry out cleaning carefully to avoid contact with the moving parts.

After the hearing, HSE Inspector Bradley Wigglesworth said: “There is no excuse for companies to operate machinery without protecting employees and other workers from the dangerous parts. The requirement for guarding is well known and recognised across industry not least because the risks are obvious.

“Had the machine had adequate guarding and a safe system of work implemented to isolate the machine, the serious and painful injury to this young and inexperienced worker could have been avoided.”

In October, two other recycling firms – Neath Port Talbot Recycling and MSK Waste Management and Recycling – were also fined for similar incidents.

Waste sector ‘one of the most dangerous’

Injuries and deaths in the waste sector are not uncommon, and the HSE has branded the industry as ‘one of the most dangerous’ sectors to work in after finding that 10 workers and three members of the publicsuffered fatal injuries in the waste and recycling sector in 2012/13, compared with an average of six deaths in the past five years.

To reduce the number of people killed and seriously injured in the waste and recycling industry, HSE has published the ‘Waste Industry Safety and Health (WISH) blueprint 2012-15’, which outlines 24 ‘immediate action points’ that companies dealing with waste and recycling need to take to provide clearer training and safer workplaces.

Find out more about the WISH blueprint.