Saint-Gobain fined £400,000 after belt was started whilst a worker was exposed

Saint-Gobain Construction Products UK Limited was fined £412,945 (inc.costs) after a belt was started causing major arm injuries to one employee.
The circumstances were:

• The accident occurred on a rock handling plant at their Barrow-Upon-Soar, Leicestershire, site.
• The belt had become so compacted it was difficult to remove by hand.
• Two employees were clearing rock that had built up around the belt.
• There was no risk assessment or safe system of work in place for clearing rock safely from tail-end drums.
• The guards were removed to ease the clearing operation.
• Both men went to the isolator end of the belt and removed the local isolation and pressed the ‘start/stop’ button.
• On checking the tail-end of the drum they saw it had not cleared itself of rock.
• One of the men went to the opposite side of the tail-end drum to remove the rock and the pair were no longer in visual contact.
• His colleague pressed the start/stop button again whilst his colleague’s arm was in close proximity to the rotating drum and his arm was drawn in.
• He suffered major injuries.

The HSE inspector said:
“This injury could easily have been prevented, had the risk have been identified. Employers should make sure they properly assess and apply effective control measures to minimise the risk from dangerous parts of machinery”.