A company has been hit with a fine after a worker fractured his skull and a number of other injuries in an incident at a site in Scotland.
The employee also suffered a ripped earlobe, haematomas down his right side, and a broken clavicle while working at Grayshill Limited.
He was struck by a telehandler bucket during a shift at the firm’s base on October 19, 2022, and the company has now been fined £80,000 over the incident.
He had been removing cattle from the back of a lorry when the telehandler bucket became detached and struck him, leading to a Health and Safety Executive (HSE) investigation.
The Health and Safety Executive is Britain’s national regulator for workplace health and safety, and is dedicated to protecting people and places, and helping everyone lead safer and healthier lives.
The probe found Grayshill Limited failed to implement a safe system of work for the use of quick hitches on the telehandler. A quick hitch is a latching device that enables, in this case, the bucket, to be connected to the arm of the telehandler and changed quickly.
A manual quick hitch requires an operator to manually insert a metal pin from the latching device to secure the attachment. The morning of the incident, a self-employed agricultural engineer had serviced the telehandler.
That included removing the bucket but the engineer did not correctly reattach it onto the telehandler after the service was complete. The investigation found that the securing pin for the quick hitch had not been reinserted.
Health and Safety Executive principal inspector Hazel Dobb said: “This was a serious incident that has resulted in a worker sustaining horrific injuries.
“We thoroughly investigated this incident and found Grayshill Limited failed to carry out the correct control measures and safe working practices at its site.
“The company also failed to check its vehicles after they had been serviced and repaired to ensure they were safe for use.” Grayshill Limited, of Mollins Road, Cumbernauld, pleaded guilty at Airdrie Sheriff Court.
The firm admitted breaching Section 2(1), Section 2(2)(a) and Section 33(1)(a) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. On Monday, October 28, 2024, the company was fined £80,000 and ordered to pay a victim surcharge of £6,000.
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