Stockline fine is 'no deterrent'

Prosecutions and Claims |
15.09.2007

Safety campaigners and relatives of workers killed and injured in the Stockline Plastics explosion have condemned the £400,000 fine handed out to the companies that ran the Maryhill site in Glasgow where the explosion occurred in 2004.

Representatives of the victim's families said they were "very upset" with the penalty shared by ICL Plastics and ICL Tech for safety breaches after waiting three years for a trial.

Sentencing the firms on 28 September, Judge Lord Brodie said he was mindful that the firms had made no "specific decision to run a risk in order to save money" and had listened to a plea by defence counsel to allow the firms to continue trading and providing employment.

But Angela Rowlinson, whose sister Tracey McErlane was killed in the explosion, said, "I don't think it is a deterrent to any other company and I think they got off lightly." Lisa Fowlie, president of the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health, said that a safety fine "is intended to act as a warning to other organisations and to signal society's disapproval, which I'm afraid £400,000 does not do."

The explosion and building collapse on 11 May 2004 killed nine and injured more than 40, and has been called Scotland's worst industrial incident since the Piper Alpha oil platform fire in 1988.

An investigation by Strathclyde Police and the HSE traced the cause of the explosion to a leak from a corroded buried pipe carrying liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) from a storage tank (see box below).

The pipework from the tank had not been renewed since its installation in 1969, shortly after Stockline moved to the Maryhill site. The court heard the faulty pipes would have cost £405 to replace. Trevor Johnston, who led the HSE's investigation, said the pipes failed requirements for corrosion protection when they were laid.

"There had been standards for underground pipes from 1959," he said, "and they required galvanised steel and bitumen wrapping. None of the pipes had anything like bitumen wrapping and seven of the eight underground joints were not galvanised."

The  potential for corrosion should have been flagged up in later years but the companies never had risk assessments completed by a competent person.

Johnston said the investigators found it hard to unravel lines of accountability for health and safety management at the site. "Even at the end of the investigation, the information wasn't complete," he said. "Though ICL Tech was seen as an autonomous company who should do their own health and safety, ICL Plastics' remit was to provide services including health and safety to ICL Tech. In reality it made no difference because they were the same people ... A systematic approach to risk management was certainly missing here," he added.

One assessment on file had been carried out by a student doing vacation work. Johnston says subsequent risk assessments by ICL staff were "not as good as those done by the student". There were no clear references to the underground LPG pipework in any of these assessments.

ICL Tech was charged under Sections 2(1) and 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act for failing to protect its employees and others by lacking a suitable risk assessment and a system to inspect and maintain the LPG pipe. Holding company ICL Plastics was also charged under Section 2(1) and under Section 4(2) for failing to ensure its premises and plant were safe.

The companies were fined £200,000 apiece. Scotland's Lord Advocate Elish Angiolini is due to decide by the end of next month what form a public inquiry into the incident will take.

The Stockline explosion

The HSE's investigation found that an explosion took place in the basement of the main building of ICL's Grovepark Mills site in Maryhill, with a force equivalent to at least seven tonnes per square metre. The explosion ruptured the steel and concrete basement roof and vented to the ground floor space where it buckled the walls outward, leading to the four-storey building's collapse.

Investigators concluded the "only credible source" of the explosive atmosphere was a leak from a badly maintained LPG pipe (leading from a tank in the yard), which had failed underground near where it passed through the basement wall. Tracer gas testing revealed a potential leakage path from the leak in the pipe to the basement interior. The most likely source of ignition was a spark caused by a builder switching on the lights in the basement.