An international cleaning company has been ordered to pay £217,000 in fines and costs following the death of a porter at a hospital in Bolton.Manchester Crown Court heard that ISS Mediclean Ltd provides porters and cleaning services for more than 80 NHS Trusts across the UK, including the Royal Bolton Hospital.
On 8 October 2006, Peter Bonomy, who was a porter at the hospital, was collecting cardboard to place inside a cardboard compactor. He was found dead by one of his colleagues with his head and neck underneath the lid of an industrial waste compactor, which was used to crush general waste.
There were no witnesses to the incident, but it’s thought that the 58-year-old had found some general waste, while he was collecting the cardboard, and placed it inside the compactor. When he leant over the side of the compactor it’s likely that he knocked an L-shaped lever that operates the lid, causing it to come down on him, breaking his neck.
The HSE visited the site the following day and discovered that a cam switch on the compactor had been tampered with, which allowed the ram on the machine to operate when the lid was open.
Inspectors issued a Prohibition Notice, which ordered the hospital to fix the switch before the unit could be used again. They issued a second Prohibition Notice requiring it to place an open box around the L-shaped lever so that workers could not knock it.
The HSE did not receive primacy for the case from the CPS until January 2009, and did not begin an investigation until an inquest was concluded in February 2010. The subsequent investigation identified that the manufacturer’s recommendations for the compactor stated that it should be loaded from the front, away from the controls, but it had become standard practice for porters to load it from the side.
The compactor, which was owned by the hospital, had been moved to a new position at the hospital a few months prior to the incident and ISS Mediclean had failed to carry out a risk assessment to ensure it was safely operated in its new location.
ISS Mediclean appeared in court on 30 March and pleaded guilty to breaching s2(1) of the HSWA 1974. It was fined £175,000 and ordered to pay £42,000 in costs.
