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.

Two major transport companies have been fined a combined total of £2.2m after ‘a loving dad and husband’ was killed when he was hit by a HGV in Birmingham.

Neil Roberts, 60, was a depot manager of Turners (Soham) Limited when he was struck by a reversing HGV on 30 August 2019. The incident happened at the premises of The Haulage Group Ltd (previously known as Howell Group Ltd), on Inkerman Street, when the vehicle reversed out of a parking space in the transport yard.

The HSE’s investigation found the companies had failed to manage the risk associated with workplace transport.

Turners (Soham) Limited of Fordham Road, Newmarket, Suffolk pleaded guilty to breaching Section 2(1) and Section 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974. The company was fined £1.9m and ordered to pay costs of £7,300.

The Haulage Group Ltd of Unit 28 Maybrook Business Park, Minworth, Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands pleaded guilty to breaching Section 2(1) and Section 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974. The company was fined £300,000 and ordered to pay costs of £7,300.

In a statement issued by his family, Mr Roberts, from the West Midlands, was described as ‘a loving dad’ and ‘caring husband’.

“He did anything and everything he could to provide for his family. Family meant everything to him, he wasn’t a man of many words, he mainly showed his emotions through doing and showing you how much he cared. He was always there to help.

“Dad has left a massive hole in all of our lives, and nothing will be able to fill that. Not a day goes by where we don’t think of him and wish he was still here with us and how unfair it all is.

“Nearly four years have passed, and every happy moment since has been tinged with sadness and every happy moment going forward will be tinged with sadness as Dad isn’t here.”

This is valid as of 26th May 2023.

Two company directors have been jailed after a wall collapsed killing five men – with both firms having to pay combined fines of £1.6 million.

Wayne Anthony Hawkeswood and Graham John Woodhouse ran a Birmingham metal recycling business where a wall toppled over and killed five workers.

The pair were found guilty on multiple counts after a five-week trial at Birmingham Crown Court in November last year. They were back in the same court on 15 May where they each received nine-month custodial sentences.

Ousmane Kaba Diaby, Saibo Sumbundu Sillah, Bangally Tunkara Dukuray, Almamo Kinteh Jammeh and Mahamadou Jagana Jagana were all killed when a 45-tonne wall collapsed on them. They were agency workers working at the site occupied by Hawkeswood Metal Recycling Ltd and Shredmet Ltd (now trading as Ensco 10101 Ltd), in the Nechells area of Birmingham.

At nearly 12-feet high, the Vee block wall was built on site and made up of 30 concrete blocks – each the size of a domestic fridge-freezer and weighing the same as a large family car. The blocks are designed to slot together.

The five men were part of a group of eight agency workers brought to the site on 7 July 2016. At around 8am that morning, seven of them began the process of clearing the bay of swarf – metal filings – to make way for more scrap metal.

Just 15 minutes after starting work, the wall collapsed on the five men, killing them instantly. A sixth man suffered serious leg injuries, while another was fortunate enough to have just stepped outside the bay before the wall came down. The eighth member of the team was not in the bay at all as he had gone to another part of the site to retrieve brooms.

The HSE’s investigation found the wall had previously been taken down then reassembled. The adjoining bay was full of around 263 tonnes of scrap metal briquettes – each roughly the size of a large tin of vegetables. The combined weight of the machine-pressed metal briquettes was the equivalent of six fully loaded HGVs.

Following the incident, the defendants appointed structural engineers who carried out an assessment, the result being a reduction in wall heights and bays being clearly marked with maximum fill lines.

Both directors were found guilty of four charges each – failing to discharge the duty to which they were subject by virtue of section 2(1) and 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974.

Hawkeswood Metal Recycling Limited and Ensco 10101 Limited (known at the time as Shredmet) were also found guilty of the two identical counts bringing the total number of convictions to 12.

Hawkeswood Metal Recycling was fined £1million while Ensco 10101 Limited must pay £600,000. The judge also ordered £775,000 to be paid in prosecution costs.

This is valid as of 23rd May 2023.

A joinery firm in South East London has been fined £20,000 for failing to control its employees’ exposure to wood dust.

F&E Joinery Limited, in Herne Hill, was inspected in May 2022 as part of a HSE campaign targeting woodworking businesses due to the significant health risks associated with exposure to wood dust, including the risk of developing occupational asthma.

During the visit the inspector identified multiple failings related to control of exposure to wood dust, including excessive levels of settled dust around the site.

The inspection found some of the company’s machines had been disconnected from the local exhaust ventilation (LEV) system, which is used to extract wood dust at source during machining of wood. There was no way to connect other machines to the system. LEV significantly reduces the amount of wood dust that becomes airborne and inhaled when machined. There was also no evidence that settled wood dust was being cleaned up.

The company had been served with an enforcement notice relating to their control of wood dust on two previous occasions spanning over ten years.

F&E Joinery Limited pleaded guilty to breaching Regulation 7(1) of the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health (as amended) Regulations 2002 and was fined £20,000 and ordered to pay costs of £1,500.

This is valid as of 11th May 2023.

An unlicensed asbestos removal company has been fined £80,000 after its director was jailed after failing to ensure the safe removal of the dangerous product.

In September 2021 at an address in Stockport, Asbestos Boss Limited removed an asbestos insulating board ceiling from a domestic integral garage with little to no control measures in place. The asbestos waste was then dumped at the property of the resident, littering the road and pavement with asbestos material.

Asbestos Boss Limited and its director/manager, Daniel Luke Cockcroft, advertised as a licensed asbestos removal company and removed licensable material from domestic properties.

The joint investigation by the HSE and Stockport Trading Standards revealed a number of similar cases of licensed work being done across the country. There were little to no precautions taken and so their own workers, as well as anybody at the premises they were working on, were at serious risk of exposure to asbestos. It was also discovered that Asbestos Boss Limited provided fake air test certificates and waste transfer notes to customers and had also falsified asbestos training certificates and insurance documents. The company and Daniel Cockcroft also breached a prohibition notice on several occasions.

The additional sites identified by Stockport Trading Standards proved that Asbestos Boss had breached the Prohibition Notice and caused additional spread and exposure. One such case was the removal of asbestos insulating board from 20 service cupboards which Asbestos Boss charged £3,000 for their illegal work. The work was of such poor quality, it has resulted in the site owners receiving remedial quotes from licensed contractors in the region of £50-£64,000 to make them safe.

At Manchester Magistrate’s Court in March, company director Daniel Luke Cockcroft of Darnes Avenue, Halifax, pleaded guilty to all charges and was immediately imprisoned for 10 months and ordered to pay victim compensation.

At the same hearing in March, Asbestos Boss Limited of Old Gloucester Street, London was found guilty of breaching regulations 8(1) and 11(1)(a) of the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012. They were also found guilty of one charge relating to the failure to comply with a prohibition notice at two separate addresses which prevented them from working with licensed asbestos materials. The company was also sentenced in relation to their conviction for fraud in relation to falsifying training certificates, a business insurance document and unauthorised use of trade association logos. This gave the impression that the business was credible and that workers were adequately trained and competent in relation to asbestos removal.

In the sentencing hearing, the company failed to attend or offer any mitigation and was sentenced to pay a fine of £80,000 as well as compensating the victims for the full costs of the work paid for at the time. This combined compensation order totalled around £10,000.

This is valid as of 9th May 2023.