Rail regulator, the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) brought the prosecution against Amey Rail Limited, under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act.1974 for failure to ensure lifting operations were properly planned, supervised and carried out in a safe manner.

Amey Rail limited entered a guilty plea to the offence and was sentenced at Leicester Magistrates Court on the 12 November 2021.

What happened?

The prosecution followed an incident on the 21 October 2018 when a road-rail excavator overturned during an unsafe lift on the Midland main line. The vehicles operator had to be pulled from the cab. Several members of the lifting team kicked through the toughened windows of the cab to disembark the operator. Thankfully, despite several other rail workers being present at the scene there were no serious injuries.

There had been a critical change in the method of the works which the ORR had asserted was not managed in a safe manner. There had been a change in the lifting equipment which resulted in track panels of 39 ft. long being lifted. This exceeded the capacity of the lifting equipment of 20 ft. This represented a tandem lift.

A guilty plea

Amey Rail Limited was fined £600,000 after a guilty plea to the charge along with prosecution costs of £15,119 and victim surcharge of £170,000. The rail company was given the statutory credit by the judge for entering a guilty plea at the first opportunity.

ORR found during investigation that as the lift started, the excavator's on board safety system had alerted that the load exceeded the capacity of the excavator. The alerts were ignored and the safety systems were disabled for the work to continue.

There had been inadequate radio-based communication between the operators and the lifting supervisor which at the time of the lift had developed a defect. The work continued despite alternative replacement radio equipment being available.

ORR's HM Chief Inspector of Railways Ian Prosser CBE, commented:

"The risks of failing to comply with the lifting regulations are well known throughout the industry and clearly foreseeable. In this case basic errors were made and it is by sheer luck that no one was seriously hurt.

"None of these failures to follow well established procedures, nor the isolation of safety systems on the excavators, were identified despite the presence of two senior members of staff on site during the night to manage the work.

"This meant Amey failed to take measures in order to adequately manage the risks presented when tandem lifting loads of the size and weight of those undertaken on 21 October 2018."

The regulations

The basis of the prosecution rested on Regulation 8 of the Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998 (LOLER/the regulations) which provides that: "Organisation of lifting operations (1) Every employer shall ensure that every lifting operation involving lifting equipment is  (a) properly planned by a competent person; (b) appropriately supervised; and (c) carried out in a safe manner. (2) In this regulation 'lifting operation' means an operation concerned with the lifting or lowering of a load."

A company spokesperson relayed that Amey Rail Limited regretted the incident took place. They added that the court acknowledged the company's generally good health and safety record but of which it fell short on this occasion.

The prosecution highlights exposure to criminal prosecution, reputational damage and financial repercussions as a result of incidents of this nature when evidence portrays unsafe systems of work.

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