Digger accident firm handed fines
26/03/2010
A firm which broke health and safety law when a construction worker was run over by a digger has been prosecuted.
Brothers Bryan Kendra and Michael Kendra of L&S Kendra & Sons in Melbourne, East Yorkshire, were both fined £9,000 and each ordered to pay £2,500 in costs.
Magistrates in Beverley were told that on 29 July 2009, at a site in Mill Lane, Seaton Ross, Bryan Kendra was reversing an excavator digger and ran over 56-year-old bricklayer Andrew Trezise, breaking his pelvis and seriously injuring his leg.
The Health and Safety Executive said the firm had placed no markings to show workers where the digger was operating to make sure it was separated from site pedestrians and no one was organised to oversee any reversing manoeuvres.
HSE inspector Geoff Clark said: "L&S Kendra and Sons failed to have proper systems in place at the site to restrict and control the movement of the digger. As a result workers on the site were left at serious risk.
"It is essential that steps are taken to segregate moving machinery, such as diggers, from other people on-site".
Both men admitted breaking section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974.
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