£73,000 bill for 'appalling' safety at packaging firm

A firm that makes plastic food packaging has been ordered to pay more than £73,000, after its 'appalling' safety standards led to a worker's injury.

The Lancashire packaging firm was prosecuted by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) following an accident in which a worker's left hand became trapped in unguarded machinery in June 2012.

Two other workers had been injured in similar machinery incidents fewer than nine months earlier. Many safety guards were missing or disabled on machines, and management has failed to ensure workers received safety training, the investigators revealed.

The worker suffered burns and crush injuries to his hand, required skin grafts and has the top half of his middle finger amputated. The court heard two other workers were injured when their hands became trapped in machinery in April 2012 and September 2011.

The safety watchdog alerted the firm to the need to guard dangerous machine parts during a site visit in September 2009. The HSE said, "This warning was repeated in July 2011 when an external health and safety consultant highlighted 'intolerable risks' from missing guards on machines at the factory."

Safety warning were repeated later in the year when the consultant returned to the site and discovered no action had been taken.

After the hearing, HSE principal inspector Mike Sebastian said, "When we visited the factory following the incident, we found an appalling state of health and safety with no safe system of work in place for any of the machines. What's even more shocking is that the company had failed to take any action to improve safety despite receiving numerous warnings and at least two other workers also suffering injuries."

Sebastian added, "There appears to have been a complete absence of any attempt to organise or control health and safety at the factory, with the company apparently showing a total lack of care about the safety of its employees."

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