Corus fined £100k over crane accident
16 Mar 2010
Sheffield, UK – Steelmaker Corus UK Ltd has been fined £100,000 and ordered to pay £9,908.50 costs after it was prosecuted by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) over an incident at its Aldwarke Steel Works in Rotherham. A worker at escaped with only minor injuries after the crane he was operating overturned at the facility on 4 Sept 2008.
Sheffield Crown Court heard that although the crane had been fitted with ’safe working load’ alarms following concerns over its stability, they were not switched on because the driver had not been trained on using them. When the crane became overloaded no alarms sounded and it overturned.
After the hearing, HSE Inspector Geoff Clark said: “This is a serious health and safety breach by a company that globally employs tens of thousands of people which could easily have led to people being killed. The operator was extremely lucky to escape with only minor injuries.
“Today’s hearing highlights the importance of having an effective system in place for managing health and safety to stop easily avoidable incidents. In this case the measures in place were simply inadequate, in particular, there was a substantial failure to provide enough suitable training.”
