East London-based door and window manufacturer MM Contracting Ltd has been fined £35,000 for health and safety breaches after a Polish carpenter died when a mass of stacked wooden panels fell on him.
The company, based in Leyton, pleaded guilty to the breaches during a hearing at Southwark Crown Court.
The 55-year-old carpenter had only been in the UK for 10 days when he attempted to help his son – a fellow employee – remove a large wood panel from the middle of a pile stacked upright against a wall of the workshop.
The company’s normal system for selecting a board was for one worker to stand in front of the stack and take the weight of the boards while another worker selected one of the panels from the side.
In this case the boards, weighing three-quarters of a ton, toppled over and crushed the worker, causing fatal head injuries.
A Health and Safety Executive (HSE) investigation found the company did not have a safe system of work for selecting boards. It should have either stored them flat or used racking.
“This was a death waiting to happen,” said HSE inspector Kevin Smith. “Incidents such as this are still a common occurrence in the industry despite the existence of guidance from the HSE offering simple, inexpensive solutions for stacking wood safely.”
MM Contracting, which was also ordered to pay £9,000 court costs, has since introduced racking for storing boards.
