Cleanzine: your weekly cleaning and hygiene industry newsletter 11th April 2024 Issue no. 1109
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Unusual cleaning job leads to fall and fine
Falls from height have been brought to our attention again with the news that national bread maker Warburtons has been fined £2million after a worker was hospitalised following a fall.
Late in 2013, Andrew Sears was cleaning one of the mixing machines at the Wednesbury bakery, a routine job he carried out every few weeks, when he lost his footing and fell nearly two-meters.
The father-of-one, who had worked at the factory since 2007, was hospitalised with a compression fracture in his spine. When he returned to work, he was unable to continue in his old role and was dismissed in December 2015 after another long period of sick leave.
The investigation found that Warburtons routinely expected its workers to access the top of the mixers to clean them. The workers were often unbalanced and would brace themselves to stop from falling; they were not adequately supervised and there had been no training on how the mixer needed to be cleaned at height. The company failed to control the risk of falls from height when carrying out this routine cleaning activity.
Warburtons, Hereford Street, Bolton, pleaded guilty to breaching Regulation 6(3) of the Work at Height Regulation 2005 and was fined £2million and ordered to pay costs of £19,609.28.
"This case highlights how important it is for companies to fully assess the risks from work activities at height and to take appropriate action to prevent injury in the workplace," said HSE inspector Mahesh Mahey after the hearing. "This should have been prevented, falls from height is one of the biggest killers in the workplace and even falls from fairly low levels can be extremely dangerous.
"Mr Sears' life has been changed forever but he his injuries could have been more severe."
13th July 2017