A company in Birmingham has been fined £1,275,000 after a 26-year-old man was crushed to death during maintenance work at Mountsorrel Quarry in Leicestershire.  Luke Branston, from Leicester, died in the early hours of 21 June 2017 after becoming trapped between a conveyor and a feed hopper.

A Herefordshire catering and retail butchers has been fined after a teenage worker severed three fingers and partially a fourth while operating machinery that hadn’t been suitably guarded.  

Its Fire Door Safety Week (FDSW).  The theme for this year’s campaign, which runs from 25 – 29 September, is ‘Recognise it, Report it’ and aims to help people spot problems with faulty doors so they can be reported, then repaired or replaced.

A local authority has been fined £90,000 for health and safety failings after a worker's arm was trapped by a road chipper and later amputated.  Hamilton Sheriff Court was told that on the morning of 22 February 2019, a 38-year-old road worker from South Lanarkshire Council and a colleague were setting up a road chipping machine on the B7078, near junction 11 of the M74 in South Lanarkshire. 

The amendments to the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 made by section 156 of the Building Safety Act 2022 apply to all non-domestic premises – such as where people work, visit or stay – as well as the non-domestic parts of multi-occupied residential buildings, such as communal corridors, stairs and plant rooms.  In summary, the amendments to the Fire Safety Order require that all responsible persons must record specific details - read on.

A haulage company in Wales has been fined £100,000 after a worker fell from a loading bay and died.  The 63-year-old, from Hungary, had been preparing a load of trailers in his lorry ahead of departure from Williams Haulage Limited’s site at Deeside Industrial Estate on 16 March 2020. The load of trailers were due to be delivered to a site in Germany. He was not employed by Williams Haulage.

A company in Berkshire has been fined £16,000 after putting an employee at risk of exposure to ionising radiation.  A worker at Gemini Technology (Reading) Limited was put at risk of exposure to 500 milliSieverts (mSv) per hour while working on an irradiator at a calibration facility operated by the Ministry of Defence on 7 September 2018.

Time is running out for high-rise residential buildings to be registered with the Building Safety Regulator (BSR).  The new watchdog will better protect people who live in high-rise buildings. It was set up as part of the Government’s response to the Grenfell fire.

The investigation into deaths of two men at the Teesworks site in 2019 will now be led by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).  On 19 September 2019, John Mackay and Tom Williams died following an explosion at the site.

MD Safety comment:  This highlights the need to control exposure to welding fume - which is now classed as carcinogenic.  Many companies are unaware that respiratory protection is a pre-requisite requirement.

A West Midlands engineering company and its managing director have been fined for failing to protect their workers from welding fume.   Associated Metalmasters Limited and managing director Darren Spittle were prosecuted by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) following an inspection of the company’s former site at Woodside Industrial Estate, Pedmore Road, Dudley, in October 2021.