Binding machine causes lost finger and £14,000 fine

Ashford Colour Press Limited, of Gosport, was fined  £14,278 (inc. costs) after an employee was injured on a binding machine.

The circumstances were:

• An employee, Ms Bull, was attempting to clean the milling blades on the large binding machine and had removed a fixed guard to access the parts.
• At the same time a fellow worker changed a milling bag where paper dust is collected.
• The machine was restarted when Ms Bull was still working with the fixed guards open. She was unable to react in time and the moving blades caught her fingers.
• She had to have the middle finger of her right hand amputated.

The HSE Inspector said:

“This was an easily preventable incident that has left a young worker with an irreversible hand injury. The system of work was inherently unsafe because it should not have been possible to operate the machine with dangerous moving parts exposed. It is vital that all maintenance work, however routine, is properly planned and assessed, and that suitable protection measures are implemented. That is especially true when you are dealing with powerful equipment like the binding machine that injured Leharna.”