A Herefordshire sawmill company was fined £200,000 and ordered to pay £ 22,016 after worker was fatally injured, whilst removing wood debris, when a lift conveyor collapsed on top of him. An investigation by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) found that the company had failed to assess the risks associated with the cleaning operation or to provide a suitable system of work for removing debris from beneath the raised lift conveyor.
A Scottish chemical manufacturing company was fined £560,000 after employee was scalded, in March 2016, with boiling water. An investigation by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) found that a relatively safe cleaning process of washing down with cold water had evolved and changed over time. The process had developed into the practice of overnight boiling of water, while simultaneously pressurising the reaction vessel as part of a cleaning cycle. The incremental changes to the cleaning process were not subject to a review of the company’s risk assessment and the danger of pressurising a vessel was not recognised, consequently no control measures were put in place to remove this danger.
A Northamptonshire environmental management services company has been fined £1,020,000 and ordered to pay costs of £60,476. after a worker was fatally injured by a reversing vehicle. An investigation by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) into the incident found that a suitable and sufficient risk assessment had not been carried out for the collection route and there was a failure to adequately supervise the waste and recycling round.
A Scottish chemical firm has been fined £400,000 following an incident in which ethylene was released from a cracked pipe. The release of approximately seventeen tonnes of ethylene occurred in May 2017. This leak resulted in the formation of a flammable gas cloud of around 65,000m³. The HSE stated that “the line should have been designed for all potential operating conditions and should not have failed as a result of the rapid opening of a valve and sudden inrush of hot gas”