Waste machine was switched on as man was cleaning inside Company fined £80,000 after worker paralysed
ARECYCLING plant worker was left paralysed from the waist down after he plunged down a chute when a machine was accidentally started.
Daniel Edwards, a supervisor at Mercian Recycling in Kings Norton, suffered multiple injuries and is now confined to a wheelchair.
Now the company has been fined £80,000 over the shocking safety failures.
The company previously admitted a charge under the Health and Safety at Work Act. It was also ordered to pay £2,498 costs.
Birmingham Crown Court heard Mr Edwards, from Kings Norton, had gone into part of a machine to clean debris which had become stuck to rollers.
Though the machine was fitted with guards, Mr Edwards had used step-ladders to get to the area which was an “inappropriate” thing to do.
Paul Cooper, prosecuting for the Health and Safety Executive, said Mr Edwards, 25, had learnt what to do from previous workers carrying out the task.
He said there was no formal record of training on the machine and no safe system of work written up.
There should have been a system which did not allow it to be used while someone was cleaning it, he added.
But on December 22 last year there was a “misunderstanding” and one of his co-workers switched it on.
“Mr Edwards was inside and the conveyor belt moved,” he said. “He fell a height of about four metres. He sustained a serious injury. He is in a wheelchair and paralysed.
“When spoken to, witnesses did not have a clue about procedures.”
In passing sentence, District Judge David Robinson said: “The operation of machinery carries a particular risk for employees and requires an appropriate and commensurate safe system of work to be in place.
“Mercian Recycling failed to put in place a safe system of work for the maintenance of the machine. Mr Edwards suffered life-changing injuries as a result.
“An obvious step would have been for the person in the machine to have the key for the isolation switch. There was no such procedure.”
He said the elementary nature of the failure meant there was high culpability.
Malcolm Galloway, defending, said it was a close-knit family business which employed 17 people and that a new guard had been coming in and procedures were changing.
“The failure here is failing to have an isolation procedure,” he said.
Afterwards Mr Edwards spoke of the devastating consequences of the fall, saying: “The effect on me was really quite big. I spent six days at the QE [Hospital] and then four and a half months in rehabilitation.
“I am still waiting for modifications to the property I live in and still can’t take a shower properly in a wheelchair.
“At least I can enjoy Christmas this year because last year I could not remember anything.”