A sweet maker has been fined for safety breaches after a worker’s hand was crushed in machinery.
The 28-year-old man was running a machine at Tilley’s Sweets on June 9, 2011 when the machine jammed.
He put in his hand to remove the sweets but the glove on his right hand got caught, pulling it into the dangerous moving parts.
The man’s hand was severely damaged and required several operations to straighten the tendons. He was off work for four months and continues to have physiotherapy and struggles with use of his damaged hand.
A Health and Safety Executive (HSE) investigation found that Tilley’s Sweets failed to protect the safety of their employees by not preventing access to dangerous parts of machinery. A guard would have prevented the incident from happening.
After the incident the HSE served a prohibition notice halting further work on the machine until the firm put a safety guard in place.
Tilley’s Sweets, of Springfields, Oundle Road, Thrapston were fined £1,500, with costs of £5,175, at Kettering Magistrates Court today.
Speaking after the case, HSE Inspector Elizabeth Hornsby said: “This incident was debilitating and traumatic for the employee yet a simple guard would have stopped this from happening.
“Organisations have a duty to protect their workforce and HSE will not hesitate to prosecute those who break the law in this way.”