Twelve years of bad health and safety practice leads to nasty accident

Posted on June 26^th 2012

Liability insurance customers know that unscrupulous business owners can put the lives of their workers at risk for years before a nasty accident happens. Then when it does, the years of neglect can mean that accident being very debilitating for the victim.

This was certainly the case recently when Marling Leek Limited ignored health and safety for over a decade, eventually leading to a very nasty accident.

Dye machine operative Stewart Wood was working the night shift when the webbing used to make the company's seatbelts and harness products became wrapped around the rollers of the heavy machinery he was operating. Liability insurance is hopefully in place because he climbed onto the machinery, without isolating the power, to untangle the webbing. As a result both his arms were pulled into the machinery where they became trapped.

His screams roused a colleague who didn't know how to stop the machine. By the time help came Wood had suffered major burns and skin damage on both arms. He had to have skin grafts on both arms and has suffered a permanent loss of feeling as a result.

The Health and Safety Executive found that in the 12 years Wood had worked for the company he had never been given proper training in operating the machinery. It was pure luck that an accident hadn't happened before.

Marling Leek Limited pleaded guilty to breaching the Health and Safety at Work and presumably will be hoping that the company's liability insurance will cover the resulting £10,827 in fines and court costs.

Related links

The Health and Safety Executive's report on the case

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