Foam firm fined after worker injured

A Derbyshire foam manufacturer has been sentenced after a lorry driver’s back was broken when a pile of insulating board fell on him at the firm’s premises in Stoke on Trent.

Newcastle-under-Lyme Magistrates heard that on 21 October 2009 Colin Ball, a 52-year-old lorry driver from Codsall near Wolverhampton, was delivering a consignment of insulation board to the company’s warehouse when a separate stack toppled onto him and knocked him back into his trailer.

The driver suffered multiple spinal fractures and a serious head injury and is likely to need long term rehabilitation for his injuries.

Recticel Limited of Alfreton in Derbyshire pleaded guilty to breaching Section 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Etc Act 1974. The incident occurred at the company’s premises at Enterprise Way, Whittle Road, Meir Park, Stoke on Trent.

Recticel specialises in the manufacture and converting of Polyurethane foams and has over one hundred manufacturing establishments in 20 countries, employing over 11,000 people worldwide.

Recticel was fined £6,238 and ordered to pay £11,762 costs.

HSE inspector Lyn Mizen said:

“Employers have just as great a duty of care to visiting employees as they do to their own. Every year in the delivery and haulage industry there are a number of workplace fatalities and serious injuries as a result of falling objects.

“This incident serves to highlight the need for companies to ensure that their stacking arrangements are properly planned, managed and controlled. This incident could easily have been prevented had the company implemented a suitable and sufficient safe system of work to effectively manage the risks posed by stacked materials in their warehouse.”