 Home Health and Safety Health and Safety News
£2 Fine for Workplace Death
19 June 2008
A company convicted of safety offences that resulted in one person being killed and three seriously injured has been fined two pounds.
NW Aerosols Ltd were fined £2 plus £1 costs at Liverpool Crown Court on 4th June for health and safety offences which resulted in the death of Christopher Knoop and the severe injury of three other workers. An explosion at the factory in December 2005 had resulted from the release of liquid petroleum gas used as a propellant for aerosol cans. HSE investigation concluded that the explosion could have been avoided if the company had followed the correct procedures.
None of the directors who ran NW Aerosol were in court. Judge Graham Morrow QC said he was only able to impose this “absurd and unreasonable fine” because they had put the company into voluntary liquidation. If NW Aerosols Ltd was still trading, the starting point for a fine would have been £250,000, for what he described as “an accident waiting to happen”.
Campaign group, Families Against Corporate Killing (FACK), said the ridiculously low fine shows the need for a clear duty on Directors so that the managers responsible for the negligence could be brought to justice. A spokesperson for FACK said ‘We feel that if Directors had positive legal duties for the H&S, then the individual Directors of this company could have been held to account in court. We are calling on the government and the HSE to look urgently at the need to change the law to stop other workers being killed.’
Contact Details
Health and Safety section
Ph: 0161 249 2441
Fax: 0161 249 2475
Email: healthandsafety@usdaw.org.uk
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