Supermarket giant Tesco has been hit with a £160,000 fine for an injury inflicted by a falling roll cage. The fine is eight times the penalty levied on the company in 2013 for a similar offence the previous year. The difference in the two fines reflects the influence of the sentencing guidelines for OSH offences introduced in 2016, which were intended to increase sanctions on larger employers and the removal of a fine ceiling for magistrates.
The employee of Tesco Express in Chadwell St-Mary, Essex, was working alone, using a tail-lift to unload slimline roll cages laden with stock from a delivery vehicle when the accident happened on 30 September 2015.
He was wheeling one of the cages into the store when it became unbalanced and toppled on to him. He was taken to hospital with serious crush injuries, including a fractured pelvis, and was unable to return to work for some time.
Environmental health officers from Thurrock Council investigated and found the store had ignored its own risk assessment, which requires two people to work together on tail-lifts while removing slimline cages.
The council said that, although Tesco had a system of work for the job and had provided staff with sufficient training, “it is plain [to see] that the plan for moving slimline roll cages had been for some time divorced from the reality of experience at that store”.
Tesco was found guilty of breaching s 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act. It was fined £160,000 at Basildon Magistrates’ Court on 3 August and ordered to pay £18,118 costs to Thurrock Council.
The company was previously prosecuted for a similar offence at one of its stores in Surrey in 2013. It was fined £20,000. This was the maximum fine available to magistrates courts for OSH offences at the time.
In May Tesco was fined £1.6m after a delivery driver reversed into a member of the public in west London, and it was handed a £116,000 penalty back in March after a worker with learning disabilities sustained a chemical burn to one of his eyes.