27 June 2017
Introduction
Somerville Ltd, a local joinery and cabinet making company, was fined a total of £15,000 by the Royal Court on 9 June 2017, after pleading guilty to an offence under the Health and Safety at Work (Jersey) Law 1989 (HSW Law). Costs of £5,000 were also imposed.
Background
The prosecution arose from an accident which occurred at the company workshop in Five Oaks on 7 September 2015. An employee of the company sustained serious injuries, including a fractured hip and lacerations to his ear, eye and both shins, after a number of large heavy board materials, which had been stored leaning against the side of a storage rack, toppled and struck him as he was attempting to retrieve a board from the middle of the stack.
The prosecution
The offences, which were all admitted by the company, related to:
- a failure to prepare an adequate health and safety policy
- a failure to carry out a suitable risk assessment of the risks associated with the storage of board materials
- a failure to ensure a safe system of work, relating to the storage and retrieval of board materials, was in place
- a failure to provide suitable information, instruction, training and supervision to employees
The Health and Safety Inspectorate (HSI) investigation identified an unstructured approach to health and safety at the workshop, which placed significant reliance on employees adopting a ‘common sense’ approach to working safely.
At the time of the accident, the company was experiencing a particularly high workload and was receiving an unusually high number of deliveries. This included ‘oversized ‘boards, weighing approximately 60Kg, which did not fit in the proprietary racking system installed on the premises.
Although the company had recognised that the premises were too small to cope with an increased growth in business, and was actively engaged in obtaining additional space to improve the layout of the workshop and increased workload when the accident happened, it failed to properly assess and review the impact of the working environment in the interim period.
There was no systematic approach to assessing and controlling risks to the storage and retrieval of board materials, and no formal or structured health and safety training provided to employees. In the absence of any specific instructions or safe system of work for the storage and retrieval of board materials, employees were generally left to manage this between themselves.
The company said that it had taken the absence of any previous serious accidents as an indication that the workplace was safe. The company had been given specific advice on the safe storage of materials following a visit by an Inspector a few year earlier.
When imposing the financial penalties, the Court reinforced the message given in several previous health and safety prosecutions, that employers cannot rely on experienced employees to look after their own health and safety, or previous industry experience be a substitute for formal health and safety training.
The woodworking industry is recognised as high risk; the UK Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has identified the risks associated with falling boards, during retrieval of a board from a stack, as one of the main causes of fatalities and serious accidents within the industry.
Guidance on safe working practices
The HSE has published a wealth of practical guidance aimed at the woodworking industry. This includes specific advice on the safe stacking of sawn timber and board materials, including safe storage and retrieval, entitled ‘Stacking Round Timber, Sawn Timber and Board Materials: Safe Working Practices’.
The guidance is well-established industry best practice and applies to all sites, not just woodworking premises. All duty holders who store and use materials must ensure they are familiar with the minimum standards required to ensure compliance with their legal obligations under the HSW Law.
gov.je