A logistics company was fined £20,000 after a worker was hit by a fork-lift truck in a busy yard and suffered head injuries.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) investigated and prosecuted UCH Logistics over its failure to segregate vehicles and people in a yard where the danger of such an incident happening was entirely foreseeable.
CCTV footage from the site, in Staines, Middlesex, showed fork-lift trucks loading and unloading vans, with pedestrians routinely weaving between them.
Andrew Elliss, an employee of UCH Logistics, was hit by a reversing fork-lift truck in September 2014.
Redhill Magistrates’ Court was told Mr Elliss, now 53, from Isleworth, sustained head injuries that continue to have an effect on him to this day.
UCH Logistics told HSE the yard had been resurfaced a few years earlier and no markings were put in place to segregate vehicles and people.
Russell Beckett, the HSE inspector who investigated and prosecuted this case, said after the hearing: “Workplace transport incidents are the third highest cause of workplace fatalities, and accidents can be prevented if companies implement simple control measures.
“The need to walk through this area was clearly foreseeable and the risk from vehicle traffic was high. When I saw the CCTV footage, it was clear this was an accident waiting to happen.”
UCH Logistics, of Skylink House, Stanwell Moor Road, Staines, Middlesex, pleaded guilty to breaching the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 – specifically Regulations 17(1). It was fined £20,000 and ordered to pay HSE costs of £942.40.
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