Legal News

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has prosecuted a medical equipment company, after two workers were injured in separate incidents when machinery parts were not properly guarded.

On the first occasion on 29 June 2011, an employee from Crawley was left with a fractured finger when he attempted to make adjustments to material on a lamination line.

The employee’s hand was pulled between two rollers because there was no guarding in place to prevent him from accessing the moving parts.

The HSE served two improvement notices requiring the company – Welland Medical – to take action to ensure the standards of guarding around potentially dangerous machines were raised to an acceptable level.

However, a second worker also from Crawley went on to suffer cuts and bruising to her hand on 11 September 2013, when she trapped it between a fixed and a moving part while trying to clear a blockage.

The HSE found that interlocks on the machine she was using had been overridden, which had become common practice at Welland Medical and was effectively endorsed by the company.

Welland Medical Ltd – registered at Knaves Beech Way in Loudwater, High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire – was fined a total of £8,000 and ordered to pay £6,820 in costs after admitting two breaches of the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998.

Regulation 11(1) of the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 states:

Every employer shall ensure that measures are taken…which are effective (a) to prevent access to any dangerous part of machinery or to any rotating stock-bar; or (b) to stop the movement of any dangerous part of machinery or rotating stock-bar before any part of a person enters a danger zone.

After the hearing, HSE inspector Stephen Green said:

“Although the injuries sustained to these workers were relatively minor, they could have been much worse.

“This type of incident is still far too common – despite the fact that workers have lost limbs, been disabled and, in the most severe cases, even lost their life because of inadequate or missing guarding.

“Both incidents were easily avoidable. Guards had been removed on the first occasion and interlocked guards were overridden in the second.

“Taking guarding away from machines or overriding systems to allow access to dangerous parts should be only carried out with considerable planning and with alternative safe systems of work in place to protect workers.

“It must not be routine, as was the case here.”

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