The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has prosecuted a Bolton-based scrapyard featured in a recent BBC documentary series, after an employee suffered facial injuries at work.
Vehicle breakers firm The Scrappers Ltd and a consultant for the company, Terry Walker, appeared at Minshull Street Crown Court in Manchester, where they denied breaches of health and safety law.
Both defendants pleaded not guilty to health and safety charges in relation to the incident.
Terry Walker was acquitted by jury after trial, while The Scrappers Ltd was convicted.
The court heard that Aaron Sparrow – an employee at the firm’s Waterloo Road site – was working as a “spanner man”, which involved taking batteries, wheels, petrol and catalytic convertors (cats) out of the cars, in order to be sold on by the company.
On 10 September 2014, employees were instructed to start taking the cats and batteries off the cars.
Giving evidence in the Health and Safety Executive prosecution, Mr Sparrow told the court that he and his colleague raised the cars off the ground slightly using a fork-lift truck (FLT), where they would remove the wheels and the battery.
The FLT forks were then raised above head height, so they could place fuel retrieval equipment under the car to take the fuel out. They would then cut the cat off the exhaust using a petrol saw with a metal cutting blade. A number of separate cuts would be made into the exhaust, depending on the type of car.
The court was told that on the morning of the incident, workers had done this to around ten cars. However, while taking a catalytic convertor off a car exhaust with the petrol saw above Mr Sparrow’s head, the saw flicked back off the exhaust and spun 180 degrees in his hands, before hitting him in the face.
Mr Sparrow was taken by ambulance to hospital and received more than 40 stitches as well as undergoing plastic surgery on his brow and eyelid. He was later told that the saw blade missed his brain by just 3mm.
The HSE investigation found there was no record of formal training at the company – and a tool specifically designed for the job was not generally used. There also did not appear to be any formal supervision arrangements – and there was no safe system of work in place for operating the petrol saw at the time of the incident.
HSE said the system of work described by workers demonstrated that using the petrol saw in this manner was custom and practice in the company. However, the company denied this and told the court this system of work was not allowed and not carried out.
The Scrappers Ltd of Watling Street Road, Fulwood in Preston was found guilty of breaching Section 2(1) the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974.
The company was fined £30,000 and ordered to pay costs of £26,687,88.
After sentencing, HSE inspector Mike Lisle said:
“It is essential that companies devise, implement and monitor suitable safe systems of work for hazardous activities.
“This incident was entirely avoidable – and had a safe system of work been in place, then it would likely have been avoided.
“As it is, a young man is scarred for life and could easily have been killed.”
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