Tuffnells fined £150k for worker’s crushed skull
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The operator was fined £150,000 after an employee had his head crushed by a reversing truck at the company’s depot
By Roger Brown
TUFFNELLS PARCELS Express has been ined £150,000 after an employee had his skull crushed by a reversing truck at the irm’s depot in Essex.
In a Health and Safety Executive (HSE) prosecution, Chelmsford Crown Court was told that in March 2010, Simon Mason, 22, from Romford, was working as a nightshift warehouse porter at the site in West Horndon near Brentwood.
An articulated trailer was being reversed into an open loading bay while Mason waited to unload it.
Mason noticed the trailer was not positioned straight in the bay, so thinking it had stopped moving, he put his head around the back of the trailer to shout instructions to the driver.
However, just as he did so, the trailer came back further and crushed his head against the brick bay wall.
Mason received severe head injuries, which required constant care for many months as well as several operations.
Although Mason returned to work in February, he is still suffering some longterm effects.
The HSE investigation found that Tuffnells had not assessed, controlled, nor properly managed the risks arising from vehicle and equipment movements at its West Horndon depot.
It had also failed to provide a safe system of work for its employees.
Tuffnells pleaded guilty to breaching Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, and was also ordered to pay costs of £19,000.
Last year, 17 workers were killed and more than 530 suffered major injuries after being hit by moving vehicles while at work in Great Britain.
Of these, two workers were killed and 130 received major injuries, resulting speciically from contact with a reversing vehicle. Glyn Davies, HSE inspector says: “Working with moving vehicles is a high-risk activity that causes signiicant numbers of major and fatal injuries every year in this country. Tuffnells is well aware of these risks, and this horriic incident in which a young man could have lost his life would have been avoided had the company’s senior management ensured such risks were properly managed in all of its depots.
“This irm could have put in place a physical separation between the porters, moving vehicles and the loading bays, as well as a safe way for porters and drivers to communicate with each other.
“None of these measures were evident, and so a worker was seriously hurt for no good reason.” Tuffnells declined to comment.
Advice and guidance for employers on managing workplace transport safely can be found at http://www.hse.gov.uk/ workplacetransport/index.htm