Company fined for second time in a year after forklift truck overturns.

Radford HMY Group Ltd was fined £8,824 (inc. costs) on 9 June 2014 and served with an Improvement Notice after a forklift truck overturned.  The company had also been fined £2,000 in October 2013 after a worker’s hand was badly crushed in a machine on which a safety guard had been deliberately disabled.

The circumstances of this accident were:

• The forklift truck was driven on an outside path which was only 0.4m wider than the truck, and was raised above the adjacent ground.
• The driver was not assessed or authorised to operate the truck and had not been made familiar with the controls.
• He had been taken on as a cleaner with no requirement for him to operate a forklift truck.
• On 27 June 2012, the forklift truck fell off the path and overturned.
• The driver was not hurt.

The HSE Inspector said:  

“This incident was entirely preventable and it is extremely fortunate that the driver was not seriously injured.  “Radford HMY Group Ltd had failed to adequately assess the risks to employees using this path and the operator in this instance had received no training at all in the use of a forklift truck. The case is all the more serious as it is the second time in less than a year that Radford HMY Group Ltd has been prosecuted for safety failings. Every year, there are numerous incidents involving transport in the workplace, many of which result in people being injured or even killed. People can fall from vehicles, and can be knocked down, run over, or crushed against fixed parts, plant and trailers.”