When poor risk assessment of the task and inadequate training of an inexperienced student meant an accident was probably inevitable
What happened?
The twenty year-old student was only a few days into his job working as a kitchen assistant.
He was asked to load heavy grill plates into a decarbonising unit – a bath containing detergent heated to 800C – to remove burnt dirt and grease from the plates. He hadn’t been instructed how to use the machine, as he had missed his induction training due to illness.
He panicked when hot steam started to emit from the machine. He then dropped the plate into the heated detergent, causing it to splash over him. The steam caused the fire alarm to activate, and as he tried to get away from the machine he slipped on detergent that had splashed on to the floor.
Local authority environmental health officers found the student had not been provided any protective clothing, except for a pair of gloves.
The investigation also found that the risk assessment was not considered to be suitable and sufficient. It didn’t take into account that the equipment was located in a corridor, some distance from the kitchen itself, nor had the maximum number of items which could be safely decarbonised at one time been considered, and no mention was made of the hazards associated with handling heavy (and, on this occasion, hot) items into the unit.
Legal Outcome
The pub chain pleaded guilty to breaching s2(1) of the HSWA 1974, and Reg. 3 and 13 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999. It was fined a total of £27,000 and ordered to pay £6232 in costs.
What can we learn from what happened?
Regulation 3 of the Management of Health and Safety Regulations 1999 says ‘Every employer shall make a suitable and sufficient assessment of the risks to the health and safety of his employees to which they are exposed whilst they are at work. ‘Suitable and Sufficient’ is possibly the most vague, non-prescriptive piece of wording there is in safety law, given that risk assessment is at the heart of all good safety management.
So often when reading reports of prosecutions, the failure to make a suitable and sufficient risk assessment is cited as the legal breach, but what made the risk assessment not suitable and sufficient is normally not documented. In this case study, this detail is provided, and hopefully provides some guidance on the level of detail that the law requires.
Regulation 13 was also breached – this is about capabilities and training. The employee in this case was twenty years-old, he had just started his job, and had missed his induction training. He wasn’t competent, but it is the employer’s legal responsibility to make sure employees are competent. This is especially difficult when someone has just started, and is a theme that can be explored in other case studies.
Source of Information
SHP In-Court