Safety breaches cost firm £14,000

When safety inspectors visited a Rochdale warehouse they found working conditions so dangerous that they ordered it to close on the spot, a judge was told.

The inspectors were horrified to find that every available space in the warehouse at the Trafalgar Centre in Belfield Road was stacked with boxes as high as the ceiling, Miss Janine Wolstenholme, a solicitor for Rochdale Council, told District Judge Devan sitting at Rochdale Magistrates' Court.

Fire exits were either locked or obstructed.  Many stacks of heavy bulky items had collapsed and there was no safe means of getting in and out of the premises, she said.

The inspectors witnessed employees climbing boxes and a forklift truck was operating in a very confined space, hitting stacks of goods.  Furthermore, no risk assessment had been undertaken, despite the company having employed the services of an external health and safety consultant, said Miss Wolstenholme.

Drencol Limited, of Buckley Road, Rochdale, pleaded guilty to four offences under health and safety legislation - failure to protect the health, safety and welfare of its employees; failure to provide and maintain a safe system of work; failure to undertake a suitable and sufficient risk assessment; and failure to protect employees from a risk of injury arising from goods or stacks falling from a height.

The company was fined a total of £8,000 with £6,000 investigation and legal costs.

Mr Gordon Haigh, for the company, said it had co-operated with the investigation and had no previous offences recorded against it.

Judge Devan said the health and safety of employees was paramount and any breach was dealt with seriously but he was imposing a more lenient sentence because the company had suffered the loss of a large contract as a result of the closure of its warehouse.

Miss Wolstenholme said the prosecution arose from a visit by Rochdale Council health and safety inspectors to one of the company's warehouses at the Trafalgar Centre in Belfield Road.

Immediately upon arrival at the site on 30 September 2005, the officers were faced with conditions that were so dangerous that immediate action was taken to close the warehouse to protect the workers at the site.

After the hearing, Gary Parkinson, Senior Environmental Health Officer for Rochdale Council, said: "The prosecution was brought because the company failed to take basic precautions to protect the health and safety of workers and visitors.  It is only through good luck that a member of staff wasn't seriously injured or even killed.

"Every year many innocent employees are killed in the workplace because employers choose to ignore basic health and safety requirements.  Safety must always come before commercial gain because the consequences could be catastrophic.

"In cases like this we will not hesitate to take enforcement action, as it is completely unacceptable. I am pleased that the court has taken the offences seriously and hope that it can be a lesson to other businesses that we will not tolerate such poor practices, which potentially endanger the health and safety of local people."