A LOGISTICS company has been fined £400,000 after a worker broke his back when he fell from a forklift truck.
The injured man was one of two employees loading a shipping container at freight forwarders Reliable Shipping Limited, in Severalls industrial estate, Colchester.
To reach the highest pallets inside the container, the man who was hurt had been lifted up on the forks of the forklift to stack boxes on top of an already wrapped pallet.
He fell approximately two foot and landed on the corner of a pallet on the floor, resulting in multiple spinal fractures on September 26, 2019.
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District Judge James King stated the set-up was “an accident waiting to happen” after handing the firm an eyewatering fine for the incident which left the worker with lifechanging injuries.
An investigation led by the Health and Safety Executive found the company had no safe system of work for loading and unloading the containers.
The watchdog revealed there was also no appropriate equipment for working at height.
A risk assessment for working at height had been carried out by the firm but it was deemed “not suitable nor sufficient”.
The inspector added the assessment did not correctly assess the working environment or correct control measures.
Reliable Shipping Limited, of Severalls Industrial Park, Colchester, admitted breaching Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974.
It was fined £400,000 at Chelmsford Magistrates’ Court and ordered to pay £6,336 in costs after an appeal reduced the original fine from £500,000.
District Judge James King stated: “Even those who were not familiar with health and safety would know that this was an accident waiting to happen”.
He added: “It was only good fortune that the injured person was not paralysed or killed”.
Speaking after the hearing, HSE Inspector Carla Barron, said: “Those in control of work have a responsibility to undertake suitable and sufficient risk assessments, devise safe methods of working and to provide the necessary equipment, information, instruction and training to their workers.
“This incident could so easily have been avoided by simply planning the work and providing the correct control measures and safe working practices.”
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