A company and three of its bosses have been fined more than £2m over the death of a worker who suffered catastrophic head injuries at a scrap metal recycling plant.
The father-of-one, had been working for the recycling plant for just three months when the tragedy happened.
CCTV footage shows he had walked into an area underneath a hopper, which housed powerful engines used to feed a conveyor belt with scrap metal for processing.
A gate preventing workers from getting to the area had broken, and the machine should have been shut down and isolated if any kind of maintenance or cleaning work needed to be done on it. Minutes later, his body was discovered by distraught colleagues. He’d suffered catastrophic head injuries and died at the scene.
Four days earlier, the forklift driver had been told not to work so close to the hopper after being spotted by the plant’s managing director. He was spotted on CCTV working dangerously close to the machinery 40 minutes before his death, but the director, who was stood nearby, took no action.
A major investigation by police detectives and the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) saw an entire month’s worth of CCTV analysed, with hundreds of breaches found. They included:
• Workers jumping up and down on metal in a hopper to clear blockages.
• A forklift truck driven by the worker being used to lift a colleague 18ft into the air to clear a blockage, with no safety rigging.
• Staff walking on a conveyor belt to clear blockages.
Last month at a Crown Court, the company admitted corporate manslaughter. The director and health and safety manager, were initially charged with Gross Negligence Manslaughter, but instead pleaded guilty to breaches of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974.
They admitted the charge on the basis that their failings didn’t cause the death, but together the management of the company amounted to corporate manslaughter.
An HSE Inspector said: “Serious injuries to workers in waste and recycling are too common; and robust health and safety management by employers would reduce the risk.
“If the gates preventing access to the conveyor had been repaired, workers would not have been put at risk and Stuart Towns’ fatal injuries could have been prevented.”
Source: West Midlands Police