06 January 2025
The turn of the year is always a period of reflection and for the setting of intentions for the year ahead.
This is so within the Health and Safety Inspectorate (HSI), where the team reflect on past cases and the work put into securing justice for those affected when duties and responsibilities are not fulfilled by those responsible for the health and safety at work of employees and others.
'Those affected' are not only the victims and their families and colleagues. The dutyholder itself is also affected and, in most cases, society at large is also required to bear the financial cost of health and safety failures, sometimes irretrievably. Those investigating can also be affected, particularly in the case of fatal incidents, as by necessity the investigators discover information that can only add to the tragedy of an incident.
One such case has stayed with one of our Inspectors who investigated an incident involving a young migrant worker at a waste and recycling facility. The worker received fatal crush injuries after being run over by a 13 ton loading shovel after leaving his work area, a waste picking station, to go for lunch. He was struck after joining a combined vehicle and pedestrian traffic route from around a blind corner created by the wall of a waste bay which restricted both the victim's and the loading shovel operator's visibility.
First aid was attempted by the victim's supervisor, who used his hi-viz tabard to try to cover the victim's serious abdominal injury.
Two ambulances and the helicopter emergency medical service (HEMS) attended site, as did a significant police presence. The victim was immediately helicoptered to hospital and had emergency surgeries involving orthopaedic, vascular, renal, urological and gastrointestinal specialists and their support teams, and the police facilitated travel for the victim's father and sister to the UK from his home country, but despite all the heroic efforts the victim died 5 days after the incident.
The human costs of the incident
Most obviously, the victim lost his life.
He had only been in the UK for 3 weeks at the time of the incident and his partner was in the early stages of pregnancy. He had come to the UK to find work to support his family. His wholly avoidable death robbed a family of a son, a brother, a partner and a breadwinner and ensured his child would never meet their father.
The victim's supervisor required counselling because of what they had seen following the incident, and their trauma was evident during the investigation.
The victim's colleagues were also traumatised and would never again use the loading shovel involved in the incident, even though there was nothing wrong with the vehicle.
The financial costs of the incident
The costs to the public purse could not be accurately estimated, but comprised the costs of the road ambulance, crews, and consumables used in their intervention, the costs of the medical personnel working for HEMS, the costs of the victim's emergency and ICU care in hospital, the costs for the police presence on site and the subsequent investigations. The business closed 14 months after the incident, with 10 workers losing their jobs.
The London HEMS is primarily funded by a partner charity which supports the costs for pilots, maintenance and upkeep of the helicopter and landing and hangar fees. One estimate provides that HEMS services cost £12,000 per day.
The costs to the business ran into hundreds of thousands of pounds. It incurred significant legal fees, was fined almost £250,000 and was required to pay costs for the investigation and prosecution of over £50,000 after trial and sentencing at the Crown Court. It was subsequently required to pay for the costs of liquidation and legal action brought by employees over unpaid wages and was exposed to the potential costs of a civil claim brought by the victim's family.
What would have been the cost of preventing the incident?
Immediately after the incident, in response to enforcement action, the dutyholder introduced a 'full-stop' system for its vehicles controlled by walkie-talkie. One provided to the waste pickers, one to a traffic marshal and the remainder to the vehicle operators on site so vehicles could be notified to stop moving by waste pickers when they were transiting the site. A simple solution.
The cost of a set of industrial walkie-talkies was £600.
£600 to prevent the death of a young worker, hundreds of thousands of pounds in costs and fines and the collapse of a business.
This is why the cost to companies fulfilling their legal duties and responsibilities is always cheaper than the potential cost of not doing so, and this is why Jersey law and guidance places the onus on dutyholders to appropriately manage the health and safety risks generated by their work activities.
In 2025 HSI's intention will be to continue to act as an effective regulator for Jersey's workplace health and safety legislation.
For dutyholders, their intention should be to suitably manage their work activities to ensure that their employees and others remain healthy and safe.
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