Health, Safety & Quality Consultancy
A Spalding farming business has been ordered to pay more than £200,000 in fines and costs after a farm manger was killed when he was hit by a fork lift truck.
The employee was walking from his car across the yard at the farm when he was struck on 31 October 2010.
His employer was prosecuted by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) after an investigation found the company did not have effective measures in place to allow vehicles and pedestrians to move around the site safely.
Lincoln crown court heard that the employee , who had worked for the firm for 38 years, was making his way to a potato grading shed, when he crossed the path of a fork lift being driven by a farm employee. He died at the scene of the incident after being crushed by the vehicle.
Safety consultants had carried out a risk assessment in 2003 which highlighted the need for pedestrians and vehicles to be segregated but the firm did not fully implement these findings.
Workers were allowed to park their cars in areas of the site, which meant they walked across the path of workplace vehicles when walking to, or from, their cars. Some workers used the same entrance to the grading shed.