ROYAL MAIL FINED £50,000 AFTER WORKER RUN OVER BY FORKLIFT TRUCK

ROYAL MAIL FINED £50,000 AFTER WORKER RUN OVER BY FORKLIFT TRUCK

The Royal Mail has been fined £50,000 after a worker had bones in his foot CRUSHED by a forklift truck.

A Health and Safety Executive (HSE) probe found that the organisation of the warehouse was unsafe after a worker, who had not been been wearing steel-capped boots, was severely injured by the accident.

Medway Magistrates Court heard that the worker has stepped out into an aisle when another worker, who was driving the truck, ran over his foot.

The HSE found that pedestrians and vehicles could not circulate safely as they both operated in the same areas without segregation.

Investigators concluded that better organisation of the workplace transport within the warehouse would have prevented the incident from happening.

Royal Mail Group Limited pleaded guilty to breaching regulations 17(1) of the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992, and Regulation 3(1) of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, and was fined £50,000 and ordered to pay costs of £10,406.

A spokesman for the company said: “The safety of our people is of paramount importance to Royal Mail. We sincerely regret the injury to one of our employees in March 2014 at one of our sites in Rochester. We undertook our own investigation, as well as cooperating fully with the HSE’s investigation.

“We have worked with our unions and our people to introduce a number of measures to improve safety at this site.”

The measures, according to the spokesman, include portable safety barriers to separate people and vehicles, clearer floor markings to highlight safe walkways, and extra health and safety training.

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