Logistics firm fined £15,000 for lorry fall

A Suffolk logistics company have been fined £15,000 after a lorry driver fell from a flat-bed trailer, breaking his hip in three places.

The 60-year-old Glamorgan worker, who does not wish to be named, also needed two steel pins inserted following the incident, at Denholm Global Logistics’ Felixstowe warehouse last February.

He was reliant on crutches for three months and was unable to return to work for a further three months.

Health and Safety Executive (HSE) investigators claimed more could and should have been done to prevent his fall.

Ipswich Magistrates’ Court heard the driver, from a company in Wales, was collecting pallets of bricks from Denholm’s warehouse for onward transport.

He had been asked to cover and secure the load to his flat-bed trailer with a protective sheet; but, as he walked along the edge of the trailer to pull the sheet across, he slipped and fell 1.5metres to the ground.

HSE found the space occupied by the load meant the trailer’s edge protection barriers could not be raised.

Despite instructing him to cover the load, Denholm Global Logistics failed to provide safeguards to prevent him from falling from the trailer.

HSE subsequently served the company with an enforcement notice requiring them to put measures in place to prevent workers falling in similar circumstances.

Denholm Global Logistics Ltd of Unit 6, Dooley Road, Felixstowe, were fined £15,000 and ordered to pay £4,285 in costs after pleading guilty to a single breach of the Work at Height Regulations 2005.

Edward Crick, Inspector at the HSE, said: “This worker has suffered significant injuries because Denholm Global Logistics Ltd did not provide any form of protection to safeguard visiting drivers from falling from the trailers.

“Their policy was to ensure that flatbed trailer loads were sheeted.

“They provided a dedicated area to do this, but failed to provide anything to prevent falls.

“They complied with an improvement notice requiring this, and had this measure been in place at the time, these injuries would have been prevented.”