Engineering company fined £6,000 over work injury

An engineering company in Great Yarmouth has been fined £6,000 after an apprentice at the firm suffered an accident injury.

Moughton Engineering, of Faraday Road, in the town appeared at Great Yarmouth Magistrates Court, where it was fined and instructed to pay £4,846.80 in costs.

The firm admitted that it had breached Section 2 (1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974.

In October 2010, Jack Amey, a welder at the company, was told by another worker that he should use pickling paste, a toxic cleaning substance, to take off burn marks inside some stainless steel tanks.

However, he was left unsupervised when using this substance and harmed his face when the tube fell and splashed him.

Mr Amey did not know that the substance was toxic and it had been banned by Moughton Engineering.

Despite this, some of it was purchased for a set piece of work, but there was no system to make sure that it was used in a safe manner.

When management found this out they stopped its use, but the product was left on site.

During 2009/10, local authorities in the east of England prosecuted 41 offences and the Health and Safety Executive prosecuted 124 offences.


Published by Hannah Carr