Failure to learn transport lesson costs glass firm £150,000

Prosecutions and Claims |
15.10.2007

A glass manufacturer that failed to heed warnings about fork-lift truck operations at its site has been fined £150,000 after a visitor was hit by a reversing truck.

The judge at Northampton Crown Court said Japanese-owned AGC Automotive had shown a "reckless disregard" for its duty of care to visitors.

Following a routine inspection in May 2006, the HSE served AGC with an Improvement Notice requiring it to assess, control and monitor forklift movements at factory units at its vehicle glass assembly site on Round Spinney Industrial Estate in Northampton. AGC complied with the notice in June 2006. A few weeks later, the firm closed one of its three buildings and decided to store stillages from the closed unit in the yards of the remaining two units.

On 8 September 2006, 60-year-old Bill Williams, an IT contractor, was following a designated pedestrian walkway at the firm's premises. A fork-lift truck was moving back and forth across the walkway ahead of him, shifting stillages that had been stored dangerously close to the path.

The truck paused on the walkway, so Williams skirted the rear of the vehicle to reach a nearby pedestrian door. The truck reversed, knocking him over and running over his lower leg and foot. He suffered a multiple fracture of his left leg.

HSE inspector David Welsh said there was no separation of vehicles and pedestrians during the operation to move stillages; AGC had failed to risk assess the impact of the new storage arrangements on forklift operations.
"Pedestrians should have been excluded from the area by means of temporary bollards or fencing and warning signs," he said, "but no
attempt at segregation was made."

The company pleaded guilty to failing to ensure the health and safety of non-employees, contrary to Section 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act. On 11 September, the firm was fined £150,000 plus £9,460 costs.
AGC Automotive is appealing against the fine.

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Forklift fines

AGC Automotive's prosecution was one of several cases involving forklift accidents heard in recent weeks.

• Wearside-based LRH Transport was fined £8,500 plus £1,000 costs for an incident which led to a forklift driver having both legs amputated. The driver had been manoeuvring on a loading bay when his truck fell from the platform.
• On 21 September, Milton Keynes magistrates fined Community Waste £6,000 plus £1,600 costs after an employee suffered a compound fracture of his arm when the forklift he was operating overturned. The HGV it had been loading moved while the truck's forks were still inside the trailer.
• Carole Ann Hible, trading as Specialised Movers, was fined £9,000 plus £4,335 costs following the death of lorry driver Stephen Michael Warner, who was crushed when a heavy machine fell from the forks of a lift truck. Hible pleading guilty at Market Drayton Magistrates' Court to breaching Regulation 5(1) of the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations, for neglecting to maintain the lift truck properly, and Regulation 8(1) of the Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations, for failing to carry out the lifting operation safely.