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Employer Centriforce Products, a market leader in recycled plastic products, has been ordered to pay almost £5,000 after an employee lost four fingers in a catastrophic workplace accident, within its production plant. Machine operator Wesley Dickinson suffered the injury whilst working in May 2008. Dickinson and a colleague had been operating a plastic cutting machine, but the plastic had become jammed, halting the machine. Dickinson attempted to clear the blockage, thinking his colleague had turned off the machine’s automatic guillotine switch. But as he tried to remove the trapped plastic the guillotine cutter came down on his hand and severed four of his fingers. The plastics worker was hospitalised for three weeks, and while surgeons may have succeeded in re-attaching two of Mr Dickinson’s fingers, it is unlikely that he will be able to carry out any form of manual work in the near future, if ever again. Liverpool Magistrates Court charged Centriforce Products with breaching the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations and fined the company £2,500 for the incident with a further charge of £2,438 in prosecution costs. Regulations state that an employer must ensure that employees cannot gain access to dangerous machine parts. As this was not the case in the incident the company was found to be liable and thus issued the fine. Martin Paren, a HSE inspector commenting upon the incident said: “The company should have had a guard on the guillotine to prevent workers from reaching the blade. An automatic mechanism should also have been in place so that the power was cut if the guard was opened. Instead Mr Dickinson wrongly assumed that a colleague had switched the guillotine off, and he had four fingers cut off as a result." Paul Rooney are the accident claims specialists, for more information visit http://www.paulrooney.co.uk/
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