Farm owner fined £20k for tractor death
A farm owner has been fined after an employee was found dead under the wheel of a tractor with a defective handbrake.
Father-of-four Thomas Phizacklea (pictured below), 34, was crushed to death in the incident at Aurora Park Farm in Scales, Ulverston, in July 2009.
Barrow Crown Court was told that the 27-year old tractor was in a poor condition, there had been problems starting it in the past and the handbrake was faulty.
An investigation by the Health and Safety Executive found that the most likely explanation for Mr Phizacklea’s death was that he left the tractor running in neutral without the handbrake on as he got out of the cab to walk around the vehicle.
His body was found trapped between the front offside wheel and a mound of earth, after the tractor had rolled forwards.
Farm co-owner Stuart Webster, 49, of Main Street, Greenodd, admitted breaching the Health and Safety Act by failing to ensure the tractor was in good working order.
He was fined £20,000 and ordered to pay £29,184 in prosecution costs. The HSE brought the prosecution.
Speaking after sentencing at the court on Monday (11 March), Mr Phizacklea’s widow, Laura, 31, said she felt anger and guilt over her husband’s death.
“Tom should still be here. I miss him loads. I sometimes think that if only I’d had a job and gone out to work and Tom had looked after the children, he would still be here,” she added.
“He was a kind and gentle man with a soft nature. He would do anything for anyone, and loved helping out at my parents’ farm in his spare time.
“People deserve to be kept safe and looked after when they go to work, but Tom wasn’t. He needed the job to care for me and the children, but it cost him his life.”
HSE inspector Peter Hamer said: “Mr Phizacklea’s death could and should have been prevented.
“It should have been standard practice to apply the handbrake and switch off the engine before getting out of vehicles at the farm. However it wasn’t possible for Mr Phizacklea to do this as the handbrake on the tractor wasn’t working and it struggled to restart.
“Stuart Webster had a legal duty to ensure work could be carried out safely on his farm. He should have either kept up with the maintenance of the tractor, or taken it out of use altogether.”
Mr Phizacklea, from Dalton-in-Furness, was one of 39 farm workers killed while at work in the UK in 2009/10. Nearly 500 people also suffered a major injury.
