Leicester Magistrates’ Court heard last week how, on 4th November 2015, Beverley Upton, an employee of MAC Skip Hire Ltd, was trapped between her lorry and the bucket of a shovel loader while it was being loaded. She had got out of her cab to help oversee the loading operation at the company’s site in Leicester Road, Hinckley. While trying to remove some overhanging carpet from the skip, she was out of the loader operator’s sight line and was crushed by the steel loading bucket.
An investigation by the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) found that MAC Skip Hire had failed to implement and follow systems and site rules for loading operations, which resulted in a failure to suitably segregate pedestrians and vehicles.
MAC Skip Hire Ltd of Ventura House, Tamworth pleaded guilty to breaching Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974. It was fined £60,000 and ordered to pay costs of £14,500.
HSE Inspector Mark Austin said after the hearing: “This was a tragic and wholly avoidable incident, caused by the failure to ensure that basic site controls and rules were being managed and enforced, such that pedestrians were not at risk from these large vehicles working in the area.”
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