Piping company ordered to pay £30,000 for worker injury

A Lincolnshire-based manufacturer of plastic piping used in the construction industry is facing more than £30,000 in fines and cost after being found culpable of health and safety breaches that resulted in the injury of a worker.

Polypipe, which operates out of Horncastle, admitted at Skegness Magistrates Court to breaches of the Work at Height Regulations, which resulted in the incident in June 2009. A Polypipe employee had been working on top of a lorry, loading up plastic piping, when he was hit by a forklift truck. The worker had to be immediately hospitalised, suffering from severely broken ribs.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) immediately launched an investigation into the case, which found that Polypipe had failed to ensure proper planning of the work or that it was carried out safely.

The company was fined £20,000 for the incident, and ordered to pay £5,000 to the worker and £4,700 in costs.

Speaking after the case, HSE inspector, Emma Madeley, said that the incident had been completely avoidable and resulted from a "fundamentally unsafe" working system at Polypipe.

"There should have been a system for loading that didn't involve unsafe work at height and employees should have been provided with a safe method of getting back down to the ground," she said.