NI concrete products manufacturer fined £1,000 by HSENI for health and safety breaches
A Dunmurry based concrete products manufacturer has been fined for placing employees at risk, following an investigation by the Health and Safety Executive NI.
Colinwell Masonry Products Ltd was fined £1,000 after pleading guilty to a single health and safety offence in May last year.
On Tuesday, Lisburn Magistrates Court heard that HSENI inspectors visited the premises and identified three separate locations where employees were “able to access dangerous moving parts of machines”.
HSENI inspector, Kevin Campbell said: “Employers have a legal duty to ensure employees and others are not put at risk from unguarded machinery.
“Serious incidents can result where workers are able to access dangerous areas as a result of safety features not being adequately maintained, or where they have been intentionally bypassed. HSENI will not hesitate to recommend the prosecution of companies who repeatedly fail to provide safe working conditions for their employees.”
According to a statement from the HSENI: “Access gates to onsite machinery did not have effective safety interlocking mechanisms in place, which are designed to stop the machines from operating when the gates were opened.
The statement added: “The absence of effective safety interlocking mechanisms meant that an employee could easily open the gates and access dangerous moving parts of the plant”.
HSENI said it has served three Prohibition Notices – preventing specific parts of the plant from operating "until adequate measures were in place to prevent access to dangerous parts of machinery”.
More information in relation to working safely with plant and equipment is available online at www.hseni.gov.uk/topic/work-equipment-and-machinery