23.06.2006

£200,000 fine for Leith Docks

THE owner of Leith docks in Scotland, was fined £200,000 yesterday for breaching health and safety laws after a worker was hit by a crane.

Robert Harrower, 56, was left with injuries to his left shoulder and arm and his right thigh and was off work for a week after he was struck by the crane he was inspecting.

Forth Ports plc had pleaded guilty previously to a breach of the Health and Safety at Work Regulations after the accident on December 16, 2004.

The company admitted that it had failed to assess the risks to employees involved in the recommissioning of crane number 42.
Forth Ports had two previous convictions for breaches of the Health and Safety Act in the past four years, one of which saw a worker, Gary Smith killed.

Fiscal Gillian More told the court that repair work on the crane, used for unloading cargo, had been completed and it was being recommissioned when workers heard an "unusual noise". Harrower and two colleagues stood around the crane to see if they could identify the cause of the noise.

The crane was being swung in and out when Harrower was hit by a bolt on the drive shaft, which according to Moore was not guarded.

Advocate Chris Shead, representing Forth Ports, said the task being performed by Harrower and his workmates was "unusual". The men were suitably clothed and equipped and the crane was subject to annual inspections and no comment about the lack of a guard on the drive shaft had ever been raised, he added.

The company, he said, took the accident very seriously and Harrower had made a full recovery from his injuries.

In handing down the £200,000 fine, judge- Sherrif Poole said she had taken into account that the company had admitted its guilt, that the situation regarding the guard had been remedied and that Harrower had made a full recovery.

In 2003, Forth Ports was fined £200,000 after worker Gary Smith collapsed and died inside a grain silo in May 2001. Smith, 34, had climbed into a fermenting grain bin to install a bug trap at Leith's Imperial Dock. But halfway back up the ladder, after placing the trap, he fell off, unconscious from a lack of oxygen.

In 1998, a workman was rushed to hospital after being crushed between two trucks, and in 1991, Stephen Gow, a 23-year-old docker, died while unloading steel pipes from the hold of a ship. He had been placing the hooks into each end of the 12 metre long seven tonne tubes.