Transport & Storage Sector
Moving company fined for overloaded forklift incident
Health & Safety update 07/06/2012
A moving and storage company has been heavily fined after one of
its workers only narrowly escaped serious injury and possible death
after the forklift truck he was driving overturned.
Cadogan Tate Head Office and Treasury Service Ltd was prosecuted
by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) over the incident, which
took place in April 2011 at the company’s warehouse in Hemel
Hempstead.
The worker had been using the forklift to align a one-and-a-half
tonne storage container on top of a stack of containers but the
weight of the load proved too much and the vehicle overturned. The
HSE investigation of the scene found that the container weighed
more than two-and-a-half times the safe lifting capacity of the
vehicle.
Appearing before Watford Magistrates’ Court, the company
admitted breaching the Provision and Use of Work Equipment
Regulations 1998 by failing to provide suitable work equipment and
also admitted a charge of breaching the Lifting Operations and
Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998. The company was fined £15,000
and ordered to pay £3,860 in prosecution costs.
Speaking after the judgement, HSE inspector, Sandra Dias, said
that the company was experienced in such logistics and should not
have committed such an error.
“[Cadogan Tate] made a basic error by failing to assess the
weight of the container before allowing it to be lifted,” she said.
“The container was much heavier than most of the others at the
warehouse, and the contents should have been split before it was
stacked.”
“Sadly, overturned vehicles cause several deaths in British
workplaces every year. Employers must do more to make sure lives
aren't put at risk.”
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