States fined £60,000 after worker’s hand is trapped in water pump

States fined £60,000 after worker’s hand is trapped in water pump

Two new pumps had been installed at the States-run Central Laundry at Five Oaks a few months before the incident. During the work the usual switches to operate and turn off the pumps were reversed.

When a blockage developed, an engineer – who has worked at the Central Laundry for 14 years – turned the control switch to off for the pump he believed he was working on.

Solicitor General Mark Temple, prosecuting in the Royal Court, said this was the first time a pump had been raised since the equipment’s installation. He added that best practice would have meant both pumps being switched off while working on either piece of machinery, but that employees were ‘not provided with any information, instruction or training’ to ensure their safety.

The SEB admitted one count of breaching the Health and Safety Law.

Mr Temple told the court that for many years written instructions were provided on the switches – ‘left side controls controlled pump one and the right side controls controlled pump two’.

However, the contractor responsible for replacing them months before the blockage developed rewired the controls so that the switches were swapped.

As the engineer reached in to unblock the pump, it suddenly activated – trapping his hand and causing a deep cut to his finger and nerve and tendon damage.

Requesting a £75,000 fine, Mr Temple argued that the SEB had failed to properly train the engineers in best practice and had not run proper risk assessments of the equipment.

He said: ‘There should have been a safe system of work in place that would have prevented the incident from occurring. By following this system, the engineers would have used the main isolation switch to prevent either pump in the foul-water sump from operating. A safe system of work would also have incorporated a check to ensure the pump was not capable of operating while it was being maintained.

‘The incident occurred because an unsafe system of work had been allowed to become usual practice among engineers due to a lack of risk assessments and method statement.’

Advocate Jane Martin, defending, offered an apology to the engineer and said that since the incident the department had worked quickly to put in place appropriate safety measures.

Asking for a lower fine, she said: ‘I ask the court to take into account the actions taken by the SEB since the day of the accident.’

She also said that a heavy fine would ‘directly affect the department’s ability to provide services to the Island’, arguing that the fine levied on a public body should be less than those handed down to commercial enterprises.

Delivering the court’s sentence, Deputy Bailiff Tim Le Cocq said: ‘We accept the principle that the SEB should function at the highest possible reasonable level in connection with safety practices. But, we note the guilty plea and the thorough and urgent steps that were taken, which stretched beyond the department in question to address the risks that became apparent as a result of this incident.’

As well as the £60,000 fine, the SEB was also ordered to hand over £5,000 in prosecution costs and was given two weeks to pay.

Jurats Paul Nicolle and Rozanne Thomas were sitting.

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