Dartford Firm Fined Over Safety Failings

A company in Dartford has been fined £12,000 and ordered to pay costs following an incident in which an employee suffered serious injuries after being hit by a lorry.

Leslaw Chorazak suffered crush injuries to his right arm, body and collar bone in the work accident in May 2011 at the KBC Logistics depot in Askews Farm Road, Grays in Essex.

It happened while he was guiding a returning driver as he reversed the lorry into a yard. When he bent down to pick up a torch, the driver lost sight of him and reversed. Mr Chorazak was then crushed between the vehicle and the office wall.

An investigation by the Health and Safety Executive revealed the yard should have been better lit, while there was a lack of traffic management provisions, no supervision and no training for staff working there.

Stephen Nye, a workplace injury specialist at Irwin Mitchell, said: “Employers have a duty to ensure they do everything they can to protect workers from potential risks, and this includes implementing full training, adequate supervision and traffic management measures where necessary.

“This case is a terrible example of the devastating consequences that a failure to consider such issues can have, leaving a man with serious life-changing injuries.

“It is unacceptable that employers should ignore their responsibilities when it comes to this issue and we hope that lessons can be learned from this case which ensure that the same terrible problems seen here are not repeated elsewhere in the future.”