After a Polish re-cycling worker was hurt on the job, he may decide to bring a work accident claim against his employers for the role they played in his injuries.
Envirocom England Ltd, one of the largest re-cycling firms in the UK, had hired on the Polish agency worker for their Spittlegate Level electrical waste disposal facility in Grantham at the time of the incident, accident claim experts say. The man, who has had his identity withheld due to privacy reasons, sustained serious injuries when a large stack of home appliances – including washing machines and cookers – fell upon him after toppling over.
The employee was incredibly lucky to avoid any life-threatening injuries in the accident. However he did sustain serious bruising to both his chest and back from the weight of the household appliances, and he may decide to bring a personal injury compensation case against the firm, sources say.
The Government’s Health and Safety Executive launched an investigation into the incident, discovering that the stack of appliances had been piled in an unsafe and precarious manner. In some instances the entire stack was dangerously unstable due to having five or six heavy discarded machines piled atop each other, HSE investigators found.
Manchester-based Environcom England Ltd, in Spinningfields, was brought before Grantham Magistrates’ Court and given a fine of £17,000 after the firm admitted that it had been in breach of the Health and Safety at Work Act. Environcom also found themselves having to pay court costs of £5,915.20 as well for their role in the worker’s injuries.
In the wake of the hearing, one inspector for the HSE remarked that the re-cycling company had committed several basic blunders that led to the accident. If Environcom had instead adopted a simple, common-sense approach to the stacking of such heavy, discarded equipment, the inspector said, the entire incident could have been avoided easily.