Factory fined £500k over worker's fall death

A business has been fined more than £500,000 over the death of a night shift worker who fell nearly 10ft (3m) from a machine.

Mark Pinder, 51, was working at East Riding Sacks Ltd, which makes paper sacks for both human and animal foods, when the incident happened on 11 February 2023.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) said he died at the scene after he fell while trying to remove a blockage from a machine, which had no barriers, at the plant in Full Sutton Industrial Estate in Full Sutton, near York.

The company pleaded guilty to a health and safety breach and was fined £533,000 at Hull Magistrates' Court on 30 April. It was also ordered to pay £6,066 in costs.

Mr Pinder, from York, had been standing on stationary metal rollers of a machine, at a height, when his colleagues witnessed part of the equipment being activated and had struck the worker, which caused him to lose his footing and fall, HSE said.

A HSE spokesperson said: "He fell approximately three metres from the unguarded edge of the metal rollers to the factory floor below.

"Although paramedics were called to the factory, he died at the scene as a result of his injuries."

HSE said its investigation found the company "failed to provide a robust safe system of work".

"They also failed to identify the risk from a fall from height and implement appropriate measures," said the spokesperson.

Inspectors said they also found workers routinely cleared blockages themselves even though they had "not been adequately trained" in the removal procedures.

Management were unaware of a practice in which workers were using the conveyor belt as a shortcut between gantries, often climbing over the handrails onto the equipment.

HSE inspector Elliot Archer said: "Every year, a significant proportion of accidents, many of them serious and often fatal, occur as a result of people accessing dangerous parts of machinery and working at height.

"Where access beyond machinery guarding and safety devices is required for the removal of blockages, robust isolation procedures to remove all sources of power should be implemented alongside a suitable safe systems of work."

He said the incident would have been avoided had measures been in place, and the "recognition of work at height being undertaken been flagged by the company, with appropriate controls implemented".

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