The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is warning companies to ensure machinery is fitted with adequate guards, after a worker lost four fingers and part of his thumb in a workplace accident.

In February 2006, self-employed contractor Stephen Beare was working for Botley Roofing Ltd at a site in Southampton. The company was carrying out asphalt flooring work and Mr Beare was using a Warrior 25cwt asphalt mixer manufactured by Tex Engineering Ltd.

 
Mr Beare went to check the temperature inside the machine to ensure that the asphalt remained at the correct consistency. As he looked into the mixer, he knocked a wooden batten – used to prop the lids open – into the machine. He instinctively reached into the machine to retrieve the wooden batten, but his hand became trapped between the moving agitator and the inner side of the mixer. 

 
Mr Beare was unable to retrieve his hand from the machine and his fingers and part of his thumb were severed by the moving agitator. His glove – which contained the severed fingers – fell into the molten asphalt.

 
On Monday (12/10/09) at Basingstoke Magistrates’ Court, the manufacturer and supplier of the asphalt mixer, Tex Engineering Ltd, pleaded guilty to breaching section 6(1)(a) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974. The company was fined £10,000 and ordered to pay costs of £14,884.10.  
 
The HSE investigation into the accident found that the incident involving Mr Beare was the second accident involving the machine – in 2001, a worker in Seaford, East Sussex, lost a hand in an asphalt mixer in similar circumstances. Speaking after the hearing, HSE inspector James Powell said the accident had been ‘entirely preventable’.

‘Tex Engineering Ltd did not adequately heed the warning from the first accident in 2001. By continuing to manufacture machinery with inadequately guarded moving parts, it put the safety of workers, such as Mr Beare, at risk.’ 

Mr Powell added that, since the accident in 2006, Tex Engineering Ltd – along with other manufacturers of similar machines – had been working with the HSE to bring about design changes to ensure that such machinery would be safe for workers to use in the future.

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