Director fined in £183,000 in corporate manslaughter case

The joint owner and sole director of a Hampshire road sweeping company has been ordered to pay a fine of £183,000, plus costs of £8,000, after a casual worker was crushed to death while carrying out maintenance of a road sweeper. The company was fined £8,000 with £4,000 costs for corporate manslaughter.

The company provided road sweeping services to new housing developments and had four sweepers. on the evening of his death, the worker had received urgent instructions from the director to repair the faulty hopper on a 14-year-old sweeper before a job the following day. Although he had worked for the director informally for 15 years he was untrained and unqualified to carry out the repairs. He was working under the raised hopper, in which rubbish and dirt from street sweeping was collected, when he inadvertently removed a hydraulic hose causing the raised 0.5 tonne hopper to fall on him.

The subsequent investigation by Hampshire Police and the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) established that a prop designed to take the weight of the hopper, when it was in the raised position, could not be used due to the poor condition of the vehicle. When the hydraulic pressure was lost due to the removal of the hose, the hopper fell back towards the main chassis of the vehicle and there was nothing to stop it from crushing the worker. He suffered significant head and chest injuries and died ‘almost instantly’.

It was found that the company had provided no training for servicing the machinery and they had no health and safety policy. The judge said that “All of this pointed in one direction, as more than one witness has remarked, and that was an aim to run this little business so as to maximise profit at the expense of lesser considerations such as health and safety, proper training and proper regard to servicing the machinery so as to keep it safe.”

Mobile Sweepers (Reading) Limited pleaded guilty to a charge under the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act (CMCHA) 2007 and was fined £8,000 and ordered to pay a further £4,000 in costs at Winchester Crown Court. The fine was the lowest to be imposed under CMCHA but reflected the fact that the company ceased trading soon after the incident and had total assets of only £12,000. The judge also imposed a ‘Publicity order’ for the conviction, which is the first time this provision under the CMCHA had been used. It requires an agreed account of the company’s conviction and guilt to be publicised in the press.

The Judge commented that if the defendant company had been large and with considerable assets the penalty would have been between £500,000 to £1m, adding that the case “presented as one of the most serious of its kind that the Court is ever likely to hear. The tragic death arose not because of poor systems inadequately implemented but because there were none.”

The Director pleaded guilty to a charge under Section 2 of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 and was fined £183,000 with £8,000 costs. Individuals cannot be charged under corporate manslaughter legislation. He was also disqualified from being a company director for five years. He has since set up a new company to supply road sweeping services but on a smaller scale.

After the hearing, HSE principal inspector Steve Hull said “Planned, preventive maintenance procedures should be in place for all work vehicles to ensure they are kept in good condition. Parts fail less often when they are, and it negates the need for unplanned, often rushed, emergency repairs. Whenever someone has to work beneath a raised load, such as a tipper body, it is essential that propping arrangements are adequate to prevent devastating failures, as was the case here. HSE’s own records show that 22 fatalities have occurred over the past 10 years alone due to inadequate propping when working beneath vehicles or vehicle bodies.”

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