‘Ex-worker ‘told blast mill owner ‘you’ll kill someone’’’
AFORMER worker at a mill where four people died in an explosion told the owner “you’re going to kill somebody”, a court has heard.
The blast at the Wood Treatment Ltd mill in Bosley on July 17 2015 killed cleaner Dorothy Bailey, 62, maintenance fitter Derek William Barks, known as Will, 51, mill worker Derek Moore, 62, and chargehand Jason Shingler, 38, whose body was never recovered.
Giving evidence at Chester Town Hall on Tuesday, Gavin Thomas said he had worked at the mill from about April to September 2014.
He described faulty machinery, a build up of wood dust in areas of the mill and said he witnessed a fire in one of the buildings on site, but the fire service was not called.
Mr Thomas said when he left his job he spoke to owner George Boden, who is accused of gross negligence manslaughter.
He told the court: “I said ‘you’re going to kill somebody’.”
Asked why he made the comment, Mr Thomas said: “Just the state of the site.”
He denied suggestions from lawyers for Wood Treatment Ltd and Boden that his evidence was untrue.
Derek Potts, who had worked at the mill for 26 years before he left in 2014, told the court the quality of raw materials at the site got worse when Boden and his two brothers took over, in 2008.
The court heard in a housekeeping audit Mr Potts completed in 2012 he had written “where do I start” when asked to list potential hazards.
He said: “There was metal everywhere, flour in the motors, just a lot of hazards.”
Mr Potts said a couple of years before he left he had an accident while working in an area known as the sawdust receiving room, where he sieved raw material through a grid.
He told the court sometimes the levels of material which needed to be sieved would build up and be above his head.
He said: “Everywhere around me was high so as I started getting it to drop down into the grid it all sort of collapsed around me and as good as nearly buried me.”
Mr Potts said he complained to management and after a few weeks a walkway was added to the room. The court heard he had acted as a spokesperson for workers not represented by a union but had stepped down from the role because he felt that things were not getting done. He said: “I felt I weren’t doing the men justice.”
Wood Treatment Ltd has admitted a health and safety offence but denies four counts of corporate manslaughter, while owner and director Boden, 65, of Church
Road, Stockport, denies four counts of gross negligence manslaughter and a health and safety offence.
Mill manager Peter Shingler, 57, of Tunstall Road, Bosley, and operations manager Phil Smith, 59, of Raglan Road, Macclesfield, both deny a health and safety offence.
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