Huddersfield-based Shaw Pallets Ltd has been fined £7,500 for breaching safety laws after a worker’s fingers were partly severed by an unguarded block saw.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) prosecuted Shaw Pallets over the incident that saw a wood machine operator having to undergo skin grafts to heal his wounds.
Huddersfield Magistrates’ Court heard the worker was on a late shift at the company’s Bridge Street site when he noticed sawdust leaking from two holes in a chute below the block saw. When he tried to tape over them his fingers got caught by the machine and the ends of two were severed.
The firm was fined £7,500 and ordered to pay £2,410 in costs.
“The failure was made worse by the fact that we had taken action for an almost identical breach before,” HSE inspector Jackie Ferguson said.
