States fined £60k after employee's hand trapped in laundry pump

Friday 18 January 2019

The States have been fined £60,000 for failing to ensure the safety of an employee who was left with lasting nerve damage after his hand became trapped in a laundry pump.

The States Employment Board (SEB) were handed the substantial fine in the Royal Court on Friday afternoon, despite protestations from their legal representative, Advocate Jane Martin, to take into account their financial circumstances.

The incident took place on 22 December 2017 at the Central Laundry Facility in Five Oaks, which provides laundry services for the hospital, when a mechanism in the sump - a cistern where foul and waste water go - activated while a technician was working to free a blockage.

Pictured: The sentencing happened in the Royal Court on Friday morning.

Solicitor General Mark Temple told Court that the two pumps in the sump had been replaced just five months before the incident.

During the replacement, the pumps had been wired in the opposite way to how they had been previously.

None of the engineers were aware of the "crucial difference”, the Court heard, and there were no labels on either the pumps or the panel that controlled them.

Furthermore, it transpired that the risks associated with the maintenance of the pumps had not been assessed and no safe methods of work had been established. 

Pictured: The Solicitor General, Mark Temple said the absence of adequate information had been directly responsible for the injuries suffered by the technician.

The court heard that usual practice by the engineers was to turn off the pump requiring maintenance, allowing the other one to continue to operate. “This practice was in direct contravention to the warning sign located next to the isolator switch,” the Solicitor General said, “If both the pumps had been isolated, the laundry would have to stop operating so that the foul water sump did not overfill."

On the day of the accident, two engineering technicians were working on the pumps. The most experienced employee, who had been working at the laundry for 14 years, disabled what he believed to be the pump he was trying to unblock. “(The technician) had isolated the wrong pump,” the court heard.

As he reached inside the pump to free the obstruction, the water level rose and triggered a sump switch, causing the pump to operate and trapping the technician's hand within the mechanism. 

The man was left with a deep cut on his left finger, which caused nerve and tendon damage. He was unable to work for nine weeks and still couldn’t use his finger fully the following October. “He is unable to bend his finger sufficiently to form a fist,” the Solicitor General said, adding that the man suffers from numbness, which worsens in cold weather. 

Pictured: Anthony McKeever, the Interim Director General of Health, represented the States Employment Board for the sentencing.

The Solicitor General told Court that the incident had occurred “because an unsafe system of work had been allowed to become usual practice amongst the engineers due to a lack of risk assessments and method statements". “This failure to provide the engineers with adequate information has been directly responsible for the injuries suffered by (the technician)," he added, before recommending a £75,000 fine.

The States Employment Board (SEB) - the entity that looks after public sector employees' pay and working conditions - was defended by Advocate Jane Martin and represented in court by Interim Director General of Health Anthony McKeever. Advocate Martin said the SEB was sorry their employee had suffered an injury while at work and apologised to him.

She added that the SEB admitted its failing and had taken the matter very seriously. Having learned from the incident, the body has since implemented a series of changes to avoid further incidents, she explained. In early January 2018, it carried out a risk assessment before creating a standard operation procedure for the safe removal of the pumps.

Technicians working on the pumps now have to cut off the electricity via an isolating switch locked with a key so that there’s no possibility of the pump starting. A “fail safe” lock-out procedure has also been implemented for all works requiring disconnecting equipment to make it safe to work with across all departments.   

Pictured: Advocate Jane Martin was representing the SEB.

Returning the Court’s sentence, the Deputy Bailiff, Tim Le Cocq, who was sitting with Jurats Paul Nicolle and Rozanne Thomas, said that the SEB’s failures had led its employees to face a “substantial risk of serious injury".

While Advocate Martin had urged the court to take into account the States' financial circumstances when setting a fine, the Deputy Bailiff responded: “...A fine should be at the right level no matter who pays it."

He described the steps taken by the SEB since the incident as “thorough and urgent”, while noting that, as employer, it should be at “the highest possible reasonable level in terms of health and safety".

He subsequently ordered the SEB to pay a £60,000 fine, as well as a contribution to the prosecution costs and allowed them two weeks to pay.