A lifting and plant hire company in Wick has been fined £26,000 after a worker was seriously injured when he fell from a lifting basket.

Wick Sheriff Court heard how plant hire company Hugh Simpson was contracted to unload Deugro Danmark ships once they had docked at Wick Harbour. Hugh Simpson provided its own equipment for unloading and was in overall charge of the lifting operations. They subcontracted JGC Engineering to remove sea fastenings from the ships.

On 7 January 2013 Brian Reid, who was employed by JGC, was lowered into the hold in a man riding basket lifted by a crane. An employee of Hugh Simpson in charge of lifting operations on the day was on the deck of the ship to communicate with both Mr Reid and the crane operator. Neither the basket nor Mr Reid was visible to the crane operator whilst in the hold of the ship, so he had to rely on communications from the deck.

Mr Reid cut one of the sea fastenings and indicated using hand signals that he required the basket to be moved to reach the other fastening. As he began working on it, the basket tipped upside down throwing him onto the hold floor. Mr Reid sustained multiple complex fractures to his face and nose and fractured his left hand.

An investigation by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) into the incident found that the operational plans and risk assessment prepared by Hugh Simpson did not include lifting people in a basket attached to a mobile crane. The man riding basket was not suitable to be used in conjunction with a crane and should only have been used with a fork lift truck.

Hugh Simpson Limited, of The Harbour, Wick, Caithness pleaded guilty to breaching Regulation 8 of the Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998.

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