An engineering firm in Hampshire has been fined £14 thousand (plus costs) over an incident that left one worker with a severed finger.
Pictured: 'WARNING: Keep hands clear. Moving parts.' safety label
Repro Engineering of Waterlooville (roughly 8 miles from Portsmouth) were ordered to pay up after an HSE inquiry concluded that the injury "could have been prevented by more active and robust management action". The incident in question occurred back in July 2015: the worker was trying to fix a jam in the lathe he was using when his hand came into contact with the machine's moving parts. He ended up losing a finger as a result.
This case was heard at Portsmouth Magistrates' Court, and Repro Engineering plead guilty to breaching Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998*. Their primary offence was allowing access to the machine's moving parts while it was in operation, a very unsafe practice that sadly resulted in a rather gruesome accident.
Moving machine parts can be extremely dangerous, and this is why it's important to nurture safe working practices within any environment where they are present. Here at Label Source, we stock a variety of products that can help to prevent moving part accidents and remind workers of the risks associated with them:
*Specifically Regulation 11(1), which decrees that "every employer shall ensure that measures are taken...to prevent access to any dangerous part of machinery or to any rotating stock-bar [or] to stop the movement of any dangerous part of machinery or rotating stock-bar before any part of a person enters a danger zone".
Source: LRB Consulting
