Passer-by snaps farmer in safety breach
A farm manager has been fined after a passer-by took a photograph of him lifting two workers in a grain bucket on a telehandler up to a barn roof – and sent it to health and safety officials.
The concerned member of the public photographed the incident in February 2012 and passed the evidence to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).
HSE officers investigated the incident at Newton Valence Farm, near Alton, in Hampshire, and charged farm manager Peter Kirby with breaching the Health and Safety at Work Act.
He was summoned to appear at Aldershot Magistrates’ Court on 4 April.
The court was told that Mr Kirby, a farmer with more than 40 years’ experience, had put the two men at risk of injury or even death by using the bucket to raise them to work on the gable end of a barn.
He used the telehandler despite having attended a safety day run by the HSE less than a year before, where a dummy had been dropped from a grain bucket attached to a forklift truck to demonstrate the risks.
The court heard that although neither worker had been injured during the incident, Mr Kirby’s experience would have made him fully aware of the risks of using unsuitable work platforms.
Mr Kirby was fined £330 and ordered to pay £1,757 in costs after admitting a breach of the Health and Safety at Work Act.
Speaking after the case, HSE inspector Craig Varian said: “Mr Kirby had been given quite recent training and advice by HSE and consultants and had the opportunity to use the correct equipment provided by his employer to carry out this job safely. Yet, despite all this, he lifted two men several metres in the air using an unsuitable work platform.”
According to the HSE, falls from height are a significant contributor to the high fatality rate of agricultural workers. They accounted for the deaths of 33 people in 2011/12.