A haulage company in the North East has been fined £250,000 after one of its employees died while working in a shipping container.
Gary Lee James was working for Ward Bros (Malton) when he suffered a fatal injury while taking part in devanning activities.
James and a colleague were erecting 120kg metal frames within the container at the haulier’s Middlesbrough’s premises in January 2019.
As the two men lifted the sixth frame, the fifth one fell back towards them, followed by the four others.
James was pinned by the neck between the container wall and the fallen frames. Although he was transported to James Cook University Hospital after suffering a cardiac arrest, the 30-year-old was pronounced dead three days later.
An investigation by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) found the frames had not been secured to the container wall.
It also found that Ward Bros (Malton) had failed to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare of its employees at work in connection with the devanning of containers.
Despite the company having never undertaken devanning work before, it failed to create a suitable and sufficient written risk assessment. There was no clear and properly planned safe system of work for its employees.
The HSE said the company had embarked upon “an ad-hoc and ultimately unsafe system of work, which was not effectively communicated to the employees who were left largely unsupervised to determine their own methods of devanning the containers”.
Ward Bros (Malton) pleaded guilty to breaching the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and it was fined £250,000 with costs to be determined at a later date at Teesside Crown Court on 31 October.
HSE inspector Joy Craighead said: “This was a tragic and preventable incident that cost a young man his life.
“Every year, a significant proportion of accidents, many of them serious and sometimes fatal, occur as a result of poorly planned work activity.
“In this case there was a complete failure to risk assess and implement control measures. Had the company done so, Mr James would still be alive.”
