(Canada) Two mining companies have been fined a combined $430,000 following a fatal workplace incident at the Lac des Iles Mine in Northwestern Ontario.

Impala Canada Ltd. was fined $300,000 and SCR Mines Technology (2013) Inc. was fined $130,000 after both companies pleaded guilty to failing to conduct an appropriate risk assessment.

The incident happened on 27 May 2020, when a worker was overwhelmed by blasted ore saturated with concrete and water that breached protective barriers at the base of a mining shaft used for ore and mining waste transfer.

A series of events led up to the incident. Impala Canada Ltd. had identified deterioration in an ore pass, a vertical underground opening used for ore transportation within the mine. The company hired SCR Mines Technology to repair the ore pass. SCR’s rehabilitation process involved scaling the walls, installing ground support, and shotcreting the ore pass walls in six-foot vertical sections.

Both companies failed to conduct a risk assessment that considered the location and placement of personnel during muck drawdown activities, which could pose a danger to workers. This failure violated section 25(1)(c) of the Occupational Health and Safety Act.

Canadian Occupational Safety | This is valid as of 29th November 2023.

A landlord and a property management company were found guilty earlier this month of putting tenants at risk, following a council investigation and prosecution.

Officers at the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea made a dawn raid at the 22-bedroom house of multiple occupation (HMO) in Hyde Park Gate in 2021, where they found multiple fire and damp risks.

Following a complaint from a tenant back in 2020, the Council begun an investigation which would uncover the landlord was unlicensed to operate the 22-bedroom house-share style property. Despite repeated warnings, the landlord did not apply for a licence and the Council eventually visited with the Met Police and London Fire Brigade.

Officers found:

•   Defective and damaged fire doors.

•   Inadequate fire separation between bedrooms and protection in the boiler room or lobby.

•   Covered fire alarms.

•   Burnt out and loose electrical sockets.

Tenants were also cooking in their room using camping-style facilities without proper kitchen facilities. There was rising damp and mould growth throughout the property and single glazed windows with rotten frames, draughts and broken sashes. The inside of the property was so damp that mushrooms were growing in upper floors.

Blackstone Properties Management Limited and director of the company, Mr Mohamed Ali Rasool, were fined a total of £480,000 plus costs at Westminster Magistrate Court earlier this month.

This is valid as of 27th November 2023.

[Australia] An industrial component manufacturer and its director have been convicted and fined a total of $2.24 million and the director placed on a five-year Community Corrections Order after an apprentice was seriously injured in Gippsland.

An industrial component manufacturer and its director have been convicted and fined a total of $2.24 million and the director placed on a five-year Community Corrections Order after an apprentice was seriously injured in Gippsland.

Dennis Jones Engineering Pty Ltd and sole director Dennis Jones were sentenced in the Melbourne County Court after earlier pleading guilty to a single charge each under the Occupational Health and Safety Act.

The company was convicted and fined a record $2.1 million for recklessly engaging in conduct that placed a person in danger of serious injury.

Jones was convicted and fined $140,000 for failing to provide or maintain safe systems of work by failing to take reasonable care as an officer of the company. He was also ordered to complete a Community Corrections Order of five years duration with a condition to complete 600 hours of unpaid community work.

A WorkSafe investigation found Jones should have been aware of the risk and that it was reasonably practicable to ensure that covers were fixed to the lathe to prevent pipes that protruded from being threaded, or that a fixed steady was used to support such pipes and an exclusion zone used to restrict access to the danger area near the pipe.

WorkSafe Executive Director of Health and Safety Narelle Beer said overhanging work pieces were a well-known safety risk when using lathes: “It is incredibly frustrating that this employer had several control measures to eliminate or reduce the risk available but simply chose not to use them.

“The significant penalties for this company and director reflect the life-altering impact this devastating incident has had on a vulnerable apprentice who was at the very start of his career.”

This is valid as of 21st November 2023.

Operators of a quarry near Stevenage have been given prison sentences after storing and burying enough illegal waste to fill the Royal Albert Hall nearly three times over.

The Environment Agency prosecuted former teacher Liam Winters and his brother, Mark Winters, both from Warwickshire, for the unlawful disposal of large quantities of household and business waste at Codicote Quarry, off the A1, for almost three years.

Liam Winters was handed a 17-month prison term by St Albans crown court, while Mark Winters, with links to the Republic of Ireland, was sentenced to 12 months inside, suspended for two years. The court also banned the brothers as company directors for eight years.

Judge Caroline Wigin heard Codicote Quarry had a permit to treat and store a small amount of soil waste but not hold it in huge quantities. The quarry went beyond what was authorised by the Environment Agency.

The suspect material was predominately household, commercial and industrial waste, but also electrical items, car parts, furniture, food packaging, wood and metal. In all, at least 200,000 cubic metres of banned and potentially harmful material.

The men, directors of Codicote Quarry Ltd, showed a flagrant disregard for the law and the effect of their business on the environment.

The illegal disposal means the site will need monitoring for many years to minimise the risk of polluting the River Mimram and groundwater sources as the quarry was not set up for landfill.

Officers from the Environment Agency questioned the brothers in 2017 about the amount of waste the quarry was holding.

With support from Hertfordshire County Council, countless on-site checks followed to get the operators to comply with the law, but the waste piles grew and began to decompose.

As well as mountains of waste, the pair were also burying it, more than 12 metres deep in places, under a layer of chalk. By November 2017, with the quarry holding so much illegal and contaminated waste, the Environment Agency suspended the site’s permit.

Officers later issued two notices aimed at getting the waste removed, but the men appeared to show no regard for authority and none of it was taken away, as required by the Environment Agency.

Liam Winters’ prison sentence also relates to illegal waste storage at two more locations in Hertfordshire.

The 46-year-old, of High Street, Hillmorton, Rugby, and a third man, Nicholas Bramwell, admitted allowing plastic, wood, metal, packaging, and soil to be buried illegally.

The waste at Anstey Quarry, near Royston, reached 20 metres into the sky, as high as five buses on top of each other, while material at Nuthampstead shooting ground was hidden under a landscaped area.

Bramwell, now 44, of Shepherds Close, Royston, was fined £1,450 in June last year and ordered to pay £8,000 towards the Environment Agency’s costs and a victim surcharge of £120.

Mark Winters, 49, latterly of Oxford Street, Rugby, but living at Bangor Erris in County Mayo when he surrendered, will also have to carry out 200 hours of unpaid work.

At separate hearings in February this year, the brothers admitted four identical charges amounting to allowing or being involved in accepting waste and storing it at Codicote Quarry between January 2015 and November 2017. This was either outside the conditions of the site’s Environment Agency’s permit, or with no permit at all. They were also charged for ignoring the suspension notice to stop operations.

The Environment Agency prosecuted the pair under the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2016 and the Environmental Protection Act 1990.

At the hearing on 20 October, it was decided that any award of costs or a confiscation order against the men and Codicote Quarry Ltd will be considered at a later date.

This is valid as of 21st November 2023.

Somerset cheese making company, Alvis Brothers Ltd, who make Lye Cross Farm cheeses, has been ordered to pay fines and costs of over £23,700 for a third case of causing pollution from their farm, near Bristol.

The company, of Lye Cross Farm, Redhill, Bristol, admitted a charge of causing discharge of poisonous, noxious, or polluting matter and fined £20,000 and ordered to pay costs totalling £3520.20, and a victim surcharge of £190. The case was brought by the Environment Agency.

Alvis Brothers Limited supply a number of large supermarket chains, including Waitrose, Ocado and Asda, and export to more than 40 countries.

Bristol magistrates heard that the company had similar offences from 2013 and 2019. District Judge Matthews said that this was another case of the company failing to self-report a pollution incident to the Environment Agency because “they hope to get away with pollution incidents.” She ordered the Farm Operations Director, Nick Green, to tell the court under oath how many times they had self-reported a pollution incident, to which he replied “zero.”

This is valid as of 20th November 2023.

An operations manager at a funfair company has been jailed for six months and disqualified as a director for five years after a three-year-old girl died on a Norfolk beach. The funfair company he was working for has been fined £20,000.

The inflatable trampoline Ava-May Littleboy had been playing on exploded, ejecting her high into the air. Ava-May, from Somersham in Suffolk, had been taken by family and friends to the Bounce About attraction that had been set up on the beach at Gorleston-on-Sea in Norfolk, on 1 July 2018.

She and a nine-year-old girl were on the trampoline when the blast happened without warning. While the older child suffered minor injuries, Ava-May was thrown upwards – witnesses described her as being shot up between 20 and 40 feet, or the height of a house. She landed on the beach. In the process, she sustained fatal head injuries.

In a tribute, Ava-May’s mother said a family tradition is now to spend Ava-May’s birthday at her bench in the local park.

Johnsons Funfair Limited, trading as Bounce About, operated a number of bouncy castles, slides and other inflatables on the beach at Gorleston, and at another site on Great Yarmouth beach.

Great Yarmouth Borough Council worked with the HSE on a joint prosecution. Charges were brought against Johnsons Funfair Limited and its operations manager, Curt Johnson, whose wife was sole owner and director of the company.

The investigation found that Curt Johnson, on behalf of the company, had imported the inflatable trampoline into the UK from China in 2017 and had put it into use without carrying out any of the required testing and certification to ensure it was safe to be used by the public. An importer of such an item equipment must ensure that there has been a proper review of the design, verification that the item has been manufactured in accordance with the design, and a detailed test by a suitable expert on the item’s arrival in the UK. None of that had been done here.

In operational terms, there had been no proper risk assessment or work procedure laid down, and the company used undertrained staff paid cash in hand, some of them too young to work without child work permits which were not sought and would not have been granted for work at such a fairground.

Crucially, the defendants allowed the company’s inflatables (which included a number of other inflatables besides the trampoline which exploded) to be operated despite not having, and not seeking, any operating instructions from the manufacturer, and without having their inflatables properly annually checked and certified by an independent expert under the ADIPS scheme (a scheme for checks comparable to MoT checks for vehicles).

Johnsons Funfair Limited, of Swanston’s Road, Great Yarmouth, as importer and site operator, pleaded guilty to breaching Sections 6(1A)(a) and 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. The company was fined £20,000 and ordered to pay £288,475.62 in costs.

Curt Johnson, of Swanston’s Road, Great Yarmouth, pleaded guilty to offences of having consented to or connived in each of the company’s two offences, or those being attributable to his neglect. Johnson was sentenced to six months in custody for each offence, to be served concurrently, and disqualified as a director for five years.

The sentences were passed at Chelmsford Magistrates’ Court.

The prosecution was supported by HSE enforcement lawyer Kate Harney and by Norfolk County Council solicitor David Lowens.

This is valid as of 20th November 2023.

At the end of September, we will be bringing Cedrec under the Barbour brand.

As we are getting closer to this date, we wanted to give you some more information about how this will work and what this means for you. We also answer some of your frequently asked questions below.

» Cedrec will become a part of the Barbour EHS service

Here’s what it will look like:

✓  The current Cedrec subscription service will be renamed as Barbour Consolidated

✓  The current Cedrec legal register/aspects & impacts register consultancy will become Barbour Consultancy

✓  These two offerings will complement the current Barbour EHS service, which will become Barbour Comprehensive

» What does this mean for you?

This will strengthen the services that Barbour EHS can provide you with, offering you a much wider range of support with your organisation’s compliance responsibilities.

If you are an existing Barbour EHS subscriber, please contact your account manager to see how these exciting offerings could work with your current package.

If you’re a fresh face looking to master your organisation’s EHS compliance, please get in touch with us and we’ll be delighted to show you through each option and how they will help you.

▶ Are you a current Cedrec subscriber? Check out the Cedrec FAQs here →

A garden supplies company owner has been jailed and the firm has been fined £700,000 after a worker was crushed to death by a robotic packing arm.

Andrew Tibbott, 48, suffered fatal injuries on 14 April 2017 at the premises of Deco-Pak Ltd in Hipperholme, West Yorkshire, after attempting to clean a sensor on the automated bagging production line.

Safety systems for the production line, known as the RM machine, were deliberately disabled or bypassed within weeks of its installation in early 2015.

These features included safety fencing and a system which would automatically shut down the power if anyone stepped inside the production area.

Unsafe practices continued at the company in the two years before Mr Tibbott’s death, and there was no promotion, planning or ongoing review of health and safety.

Prosecutors also highlighted that senior management at the company were notified on numerous occasions about the bypassing of safety systems and the likely consequence of accidents and injury.

On 14 January 2022, Deco-Pak Ltd was convicted of corporate manslaughter following a trial. The jury could not agree on a verdict regarding company owner Michael Hall – who faced a single count of gross negligence manslaughter.

Company director Rodney Slater was acquitted of gross negligence manslaughter and an offence of consenting or conniving to the company’s breach of section 2(1) Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974.

Following a re-trial, Hall was convicted of gross negligence manslaughter on 24 April 2023.

He has been sentenced to five years’ imprisonment at Leeds Crown Court while Deco-Pak Ltd was fined £700,000 and ordered to pay £90,000 in court costs.

Alex Johnson, specialist prosecutor with the CPS Special Crime Division, said: “Andrew Tibbott was killed by a powerful and dangerous piece of machinery in an accident that should never have happened. His death was a result of deliberate decisions by Deco-Pak to keep production going at the expense of employee safety.

“The CPS was able to show the jury that the repeated warnings the company had received from the machine suppliers had been ignored, as well as evidence of the wider negligence in keeping employees safe around the machinery.

“Our thoughts remain with the family and friends of Mr Tibbott.”

This is valid as of 20th June 2023.

A plastics manufacturing company in West Bromwich has been fined after it put workers and the public at risk of being infected with potentially deadly bacteria.

The HSE launched an investigation into Riaar Plastics Limited after members of the public became infected with Legionnaire’s disease in September 2020.

Five people were infected with the potentially deadly lung infection. One person was taken to intensive care and put on a ventilator after being infected.

Riaar Plastics Limited was fined for failing to manage the risk of Legionella. The HSE found the water-cooling towers inherited by Riaar Plastics Limited at its site on Black Lake, West Bromwich, were in an extremely poor condition. This allowed Legionella bacteria to grow in the water-cooling towers and pipes, exposing employees and members of the public to risks of significant ill health.

People can get Legionnaires’ disease when they breathe in small droplets of water in air that contains the Legionella bacteria.

Riaar Plastics Limited, of Black Lake, West Bromwich, West Midlands, pleaded guilty to breaching Section 2(1) and 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974. The company was fined £50,000 and ordered to pay £11,000 in costs.

This prosecution was led by HSE principal inspector Jenny Skeldon and HSE senior enforcement lawyer Kiran Cassini.

This is valid as of 19th June 2023.

A manufacturing company has been fined after an employee was drawn into a machine and suffered multiple fractures to his left arm.

The man, who is from Newcastle, had recently started working as a manufacturing operative for Gates Engineering & Services UK Limited at its site on Bassington Drive in Cramlington, and was undergoing training when he was assisting another worker on the company’s 60-metre lathe on 12 November 2021. The new employee, who was 22 at the time of the incident, was working at the rear of the lathe when the rubber material he had just applied fell from the steel mandrel.

He instinctively reached to grab the material, and at the same time the lathe started, pulling him into the machine. This resulted in his arm being broken in two places.

The machine was used to wrap rubber and other materials around a steel mandrel to form hose bodies for industrial hoses. The system of work at Gates Engineering involved one employee working at the front of the machine operating the controls, with a second employee assisting from the rear, helping to manually position the rubber materials being applied.

However, the manufacturer’s manual for the machine stated that the lathe should be enclosed with a fixed perimeter guard, and that access to the work area by persons other than the machine operator prevented.

The HSE’s investigation found the company had failed to take effective measures to prevent access to the dangerous parts of the lathe, and that its system of work required employees to stand in an area that was meant to be enclosed by guards.

Gates Engineering & Services UK Limited, of Bassington Industrial Estate, Bassington Drive, Cramlington, Northumberland, pleaded guilty to breaching Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. The company was fined £200,000 and ordered to pay £3,653.70 in costs.

This is valid as of 31st May 2023.

[Ireland] A Co. Wicklow construction worker has been handed a nine-month suspended jail sentence after he pleaded guilty to Regulation 29(1)(f) of the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work (Construction) Regulations 2013, following an incident on 8 December 2016 when he failed to make proper use of a large nine tonne site dumper.

The construction worker had driven the dumper whilst carrying two passengers. The dumper was not designed to carry passengers, and, in so doing, he also failed to take reasonable care to protect the safety, health and welfare of other persons who may be affected by his actions. One of the passengers fell from the moving dumper, causing life changing injures.

There were two other parties associated with the incident previously before the courts – the Main Site contractor and Project Supervisor for the Construction Stage (PSCS) and the Site manager/Site Engineer on the project.

In 2021 in Bray Circuit Court the Main Site Contractor having pleaded to Regulation 19(1)(b) of the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Construction Regulations 2013 had a fine of €15,000 imposed on them for failing to implement their duties as PSCS.

In May 2022 in Bray Circuit Court, the Site Manager/Site Engineer for the project, having also pleaded guilty to Regulation16(b) of the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work (Construction) Regulations 2013, had an 18 month suspended jail sentence imposed on him in relation to his failure to implement his duties.

This is valid as of 30th May 2023.

A landlord has been jailed for 13 months for fire safety breaches following a 2019 basement ‘flat’ fire that led to the death of a 32-year-old man.

The “entirely avoidable” tragedy was caused by a fire that started from the cooker situated in the basement or cellar of a mid-terraced house in Harehills, confirmed West Yorkshire Police.

It is believed that the downstairs space had been unofficially converted into a flat and housed Philip Sheridan, on housing benefits, who had signed a tenancy agreement with landlord Humrazz Shahid in 2013.

When the fire broke out, Sheridan attempted to escape through the door of the flat and suffered several burns to his body. He died in hospital a number of days later “as a result of complications arising from severe smoke inhalation”.

In an inquest, both the West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service and the local authority concluded that the premises was “unsuitable for human habitation, due in part to the inadequacy of the fire detection and escape measures”.

Leeds Crown Court heard that the entrance door to the flat had been partially blocked by the cooker. It was an inward-opening door and did not have a suitable handle. Additionally, no smoke or fire alarm had been fitted at the property at the time.

Shahid is believed to have been responsible for the management of the property since 2008 and admitted to the “offence of failing to discharge a duty owed under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974”.

On 3 May 2023, he appeared at court for sentencing where he was immediately given a 13-month jail term.

This is valid as of 30th May 2023.