Company Fined after Worker’s Hand Gets Permanently Injured
Employee Paulina Lleshi had the ends of two of her fingers amputated in sponge cake icing machine in January 2009. HSE investigations show that sufficient risk evaluation had not been carried out for the process of cleaning the machine and this resulted in the incident where the employee suffered permanent damage.
The icing machine needed to be cleaned off at the end of day to remove the excess icing. The accident happened when Ms Lleshi put her hand against a revolving screw in the base of the machine while she was cleaning it.
The employer, Spread Newco Four Ltd, was charged with breach of Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations and Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations. A fine of £6,000 and costs of £2,751 were levied by Oxford Magistrates Court that heard the case this week.
Following this, HSE is cautioning food product manufacturers to upgrade risk assessments for use of machinery. In this case, it was found that no proper guidelines for use of the machine were provided to the employee.
Paulina had also not been trained to follow safety measures during the cleaning process. Machine specific risk evaluation was also not available to the employees. The instructions for cleaning, which came with the equipment, stated clearly that cleaning should be done only when the machine is powered off. This instruction was not followed, as the company believed that cleaning would not be effective if the power was switched off.
Companies need to be sure that they are giving the correct instructions with effective policies around health and safety decisions. Workplace Law is a major provider of accredited health and safety training, with well established study programmes for IOSH and NEBOSH courses covering a full range of training from risk assessment to first aid training to assist in the development and implementation of safety systems within the workplace environment.
