£800k Fine: Pizza Producer's Machinery Safety Failures

£800k Fine for Major Pizza Producer After Two Cases of Serious Employee Injury

H&S Legal Briefing May 2024: One of the nation’s largest producers of supermarket pizzas has been fined £800,000 after two workers suffered serious injuries at its factory in Bolton.

What caused these employee accidents?

Stateside Foods Limited, one of the nation’s largest producers of supermarket pizzas has been fined £800,000 after two workers suffered serious injuries at its factory in Bolton.

The company was hit with the fine after these work accidents saw the employees caught up in machinery at the Westhoughton site in two separate work accidents during 2020.

Bolton Crown Court heard how one man had his arm drawn into an inadequately guarded conveyor belt at the Lancaster Way factory, on 8 January 2020. The injury to his arm resulted in the removal of muscle and required a skin graft. He has not returned to work since the injury and has been diagnosed with hypersensitivity in the affected arm.

Following on from this, the second of the two accidents at work happened on a night shift just nine months later. The father of two Andrew Holloway had part of his middle figure severed after his hand was drawn between a roller and a conveyor belt on 14 October 2020. The acting team leader had been told of an issue on the production line and had gone to investigate when the horrific incident happened. Andrew Holloway had part of his middle figure severed after his hand was drawn between a roller and a conveyor. Although Mr Holloway returned to work after a six-month absence he left after just a couple of days – which resulted in him starting his career again.

Employee Accidents At Work HSE Investigation:

An investigation by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) found the company did not adequately guard their machinery, did not provide suitable and sufficient checks to ensure that its protective measures were working effectively, and allowed the disabling of guarding systems and access to dangerous parts of machinery.

Stateside Foods Limited of Lancaster Way, Westhoughton, Bolton, pleaded guilty to breaching Section 2 (1) and 3 (1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act. The company was fined £800,000 and was ordered to pay £5,340 costs at a hearing on 15 March 2024 at Bolton Crown Court.
Legal Comment and Employer Guidance:

The use of work equipment refers to all work activities involving the item of work equipment including, starting the equipment, application of the equipment to a particular task, repairs, upgrades, maintenance, and servicing, cleaning the equipment, stopping the equipment, and moving the equipment.
Key Steps to Compliance for Employers to Avoid Work Accidents:
- A risk assessment must be completed to minimise the risk of work accidents before conducting any activities using equipment and needs to consider all factors relating to the work equipment, the individual user, and the local operating environment.
- All persons who use work equipment, including the design, assembly, inspection, testing, maintenance, repair and use of work equipment and associated safety features, must be competent and appropriately trained (having completed an approved course and holding valid certification appropriate to the type of work equipment) in the risks and the controls needed to avoid accidents at work, dependent on the level of risk and the work equipment being used.
- Access to dangerous parts of machinery must be prevented and controls must be in place to stop the movement of any dangerous part of machinery before any part of a person comes into contact with it. Guarding must be suitable for the intended purpose, robust in construction, with adequate strength, maintained in an efficient state and working order and in good repair.
- To help mitigate accidents at work, guarding must not give rise to any increased risk to health or safety during operational activity and must not be overridden. Guarding must be located at a sufficient distance from the danger zone, positioned so as not to restrict the view of the operational activity of the equipment, take account of maintenance requirements and must not be easily bypassed or disabled.
- When maintaining machinery, the equipment should ideally be de-energised, isolated for all energy sources and locked in a safe state to prevent it from re-energising before the maintenance or repair is complete. Only the individual undertaking the maintenance must retain the ability to ‘un-lock’ and re-energise the equipment.
- Where equipment has to be running or working during a maintenance operation and this exposes employees to the risk of accidents at work, measures must be taken to enable the equipment to operate in a way that reduces the risk, including limiting the power, speed, or range of movement available to dangerous parts or providing additional protection during maintenance operations.
- Make sure that you are completing regular workplace inspections – especially where significant items of work equipment are being used – to ensure that all of the risk control measures that you might have put in place are indeed still in place and minimising the risk of employee injury to a level that is as low as reasonably practicable.
It is also essential for employers to have a comprehensive work injury reporting procedure in the event of work accidents. Employee injury reporting procedures help create a robust safety environment in the workplace and support employers with compliance and transparency in the event of an employee accident at work.
What Can I Do to Prevent Injury from The Use of Machinery?

Working with machinery can be hazardous, particularly if employers fail to provide adequate training or the machinery is incorrectly maintained. Any employee accident at work is a serious matter. You must ensure that protective measures are in place and adequate work-related injury reporting procedures. Don’t wait for incidents to prompt action—contact us today by clicking here Avensure Contact for health and safety support!