THIS month has seen some heavy fines handed out by the courts for employers whose health and safety failings led to the death of their employees.
A tyre firm in Kent was fined £1 million when it was sentenced for safety offences after a 21-year-old man was killed when a tyre exploded.
Canterbury Crown Court heard how the employee was repairing a puncture to the tyre of a vehicle when it exploded.
An investigation by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) “found that the employee was working on his own with inadequate work equipment which was not properly maintained. He was not trained or competent to undertake the work he was told to complete”.
The company pleaded guilty, at a previous hearing to breaches of Section 2(1) and 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 and it was fined £1 million and ordered to pay costs of £99,485 at a sentencing hearing on June 1st.
Two other companies have been fined a total of £815,000 when they were sentenced on 10th June at Preston Crown Court, after a worker was crushed to death in Lancashire by a refuse collection vehicle in an accident which HSE inspector Rohan Lye said after the hearing was “entirely preventable”.
