A series of safety failings led to a double-stacked pallet weighing 1.5 tonnes crashing down on to a teenage worker, crushing him and breaking one of his legs.
Halifax Magistrates’ Court heard on 26 April that the 18-year-old warehouse worker, who does not wish to be named, was inside a container unloading pallets at THS Industrial Textiles of Elland, West Yorkshire, on 16 March 2011.
It wasn’t possible to move the pallet close enough to the rear door of the container to enable a forklift truck to lift it. Consequently, it was decided to attach a strap to the wooden base of the pallet and pull it using the forklift. However, this damaged the base and rendered it unstable. The pulling operation was brought to a halt and the forklift operator attempted to lift and move the pallet gently on the end of his forks back towards the rear door, but because the base was damaged, the pallet toppled over.
A previous warning from another worker that the forklift, which did not have a valid lifting certificate at the time of the incident, was being used to lift loads that were heavier than its capacity had been ignored. An HSE investigation revealed that THS had operated a dangerous system of work for unloading the pallets for a considerable time and failed to provide workers with the right equipment to do the job safely.
David Welsh, the HSE inspector who investigated the case and prosecuted it in court, told SHP the company should have ensured that the forklift being used to raise the pallets had the correct rated lifting capacity for all of the pallets it had to unload. “A significant number of the pallets were too heavy for the rated capacity of the forklift. That should have been checked,” he maintained.
“This would have involved the company doing a proper risk assessment of the unloading procedure. It did not have a risk assessment for the operation and it did not create one until after the incident. Even when it did create a risk assessment, it got a key instruction wrong, because it stated that it was all right for pallets to be dragged. This is just not acceptable.”
He added: “The firm should also have ensured that the pallet truck, which was being used to manoeuvre the pallets inside the back of the container, was also capable of lifting the weight of the pallets.”
In mitigation, the company said it was, in other respects, a well-run firm. It conceded it had got workplace-transport unloading operations wrong and did not appreciate the degree of risk it was running by failing to have a risk assessment in place, and failing to check the equipment and supervise what workers were doing. It accepted the correct procedures were not in place, but has since taken steps to ensure similar incidents do not happen again.
THS Industrial Textiles was fined £6000 after pleading guilty to breaching s2(1) of the HSWA 1974 by failing to ensure its employees’ safety during lifting operations. Full costs of £4994 were awarded against it.
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In this episode of the Safety & Health Podcast, we hear from Matt Birtles, Principal Ergonomics Consultant at HSE’s Science and Research Centre, about the different approaches to managing the risks associated with Musculoskeletal disorders.
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