A company has been fined £160,000 after an employee lost both legs whilst working at its site near Warrington.  On 20 June 2022, Andrew McAuley, from Runcorn, an employee of William Stobart & Son Limited was picking orders at the firm’s warehouse in Appleton Thorn.

The Health and Safety at Work Act (HSWA) marks its 50th anniversary today (31 July), prompting calls from the TUC for the new government to build on its success.  The Act, which gained Royal Assent in July 1974, introduced mandatory health and safety measures across UK workplaces for the first time.

A Stoke-on-Trent worker plunged to his death after a health and safety blunder. Stephen Picken was decommissioning an on-shore North Sea oil rig when tragedy struck in 2019.   A court has heard the 62-year-old was working with colleague Mark Kumar to remove an overhanging 27-tonne piece of metal pipework. But the pipework gave way, struck a platform, and resulted in the two men falling 12 metres.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is now leading an investigation sparked after four people were injured when a fairground ride malfunctioned in south London.  It happened at the Lambeth Country Show in Brockwell Park at about 18:20 BST on 8 June.

The director of a Halifax-based recycling company has been given a community order after a worker lost part of his left leg when it was crushed by machinery.  Daisy Ning Bai, 43, the director of BW Recycling Limited, was told she must complete 160 hours of unpaid work after pleading guilty to health and safety breaches. They related to an incident on 26 November 2019 at the company’s Cinderhall Works site on Sidall Top Lane.

There are calls for a major overhaul of UK health & safety regulations after new research has found that more than nine in ten workers believe there needs to be change.  The Dräger Safety and Health at Work Report 2024 found the number calling for calling for  change increased to 97% amongst managerial staff, with the need for a ‘greater focus on mental health and wellbeing’ seen as the most important factor (82%) in a future rethink of health and safety, and also a key reason in 2024 that people feel safer in the workplace (50%).

A company and its director have been fined after an employee was struck by an object while manufacturing large steel cable drums for the offshore industry.  The man, who is now 54, had been working for Code-A-Weld (Great Yarmouth) Ltd when the incident happened on 19 November 2022. Although the company had manufactured steel drums previously they had never manufactured drums of this size – with these ones weighing in excess of seven tonnes.

A local authority has been sentenced after a worker lost his finger while operating a machine.  Adi Soday, a technician at The Forest School in Horsham, lost his right index finger when it was sliced off by a circular bench saw on 13 June 2022.

A manufacturer of military explosives has been fined £670,000 after an employee was killed and another seriously injured in an explosion at its factory near Salisbury.  The two men were working on the production of MTV – an explosive substance used in military flares – at the premises of Chemring Countermeasures Limited in High Post on 10 August 2018. They were cleaning a vessel used in the production and were removing residual explosive material in preparation for the next day’s shift.

MORE PEOPLE are being killed at work now after suffering a fall from height than in the last 17 years, according to the latest figures released by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).  The Access Industry Forum (AIF), who represent the principal work at heighttrade associations and federations, reports that just-released HSE statistics on work-related fatal injuries show that shockingly, 50 workers died due to a fall from height in 2023/24 in Great Britain – an increase of 22% from 2022/23, which saw 41 deaths1.