A company based in Stonehaven, East Coast Viners Grain LLP has been fined £4,000 after pleading guilty to breaching the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974. The breaches resulted in an employee of the company sustaining injuries after he fell from an excavator bucket on to a concrete floor.

The employee of the company Douglas Mortimer was tasked with emptying animal feed in to the excavator bucket. As he was standing in the excavator bucket shaking the bag of animal feed he lost his balance and fell around five feet on to the concrete floor below, he cut his head and lost consciousness. He was rushed to hospital where he was detained overnight.

The HSE investigated the accident and found the company had not carried out a suitable and sufficient risk assessment of the job David Mortimer was doing and had not implored a safe system of work. The job David Mortimer was doing involved employees working unnecessarily at height with no safety measures to prevent them from falling.

There was several steps which David Mortimer’s employers could easily have taken to reduce or remove the risk posed to him. I think David Mortimer was very lucky not to have sustained more serious injuries and I hope East Coast Viners Grain LLP take the necessary steps to ensure the safety of all of their employees in the future.