Warning as firm fined £10,000 (From Bradford Telegraph and Argus)

Warning as firm fined £10,000

1:25pm Saturday 22nd March 2008 in News By Marc Meneaud

Safety watchdogs have put out a warning after a Brigholuse company was fined £10,000 for failing to protect the safety of a worker knocked down by a fork-lift truck.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is warning employers to ensure there are systems in place to prevent similar accidents in the workplace involving vehicles.

The warning comes after a 54-year-old employee was knocked down and run over by the truck as it was unloading a recycling container. He was working at the Atlas Mill Household Recycling Site in Brighouse at the time and spent three months in hospital with severe internal injuries.

Dangerous parts of the site were not fenced off, putting the public at risk, an HSE spokesman said.

Management company FOCSA Services (UK) Ltd was fined £10,000 and ordered to pay costs of £4,277 at Calderdale Magistrates' Court for breaching the Health and Safety at Work Act.

Health and Safety Inspector Kate Dixon said: "This was a tragic and entirely avoidable incident, from which the worker was lucky to escape with his life. The employer failed to ensure that proper measures were taken to protect the worker and the consequences of that will affect him permanently."