A food distribution company has been fined £60,000 after pleading guilty to four offences under health and safety legislation at Birmingham Magistrates Court.

Birmingham City Council prosecuted Pearl Food Distribution – based at Unit 33 Middlemore Industrial Estate, Middlemore Road, Birmingham – after a safety inspector saw an employee raised up on a pallet balanced on a forklift truck to pass items up to a mezzanine level during a visit on 7 March 2019 to sign off Improvement Notices. The officer also witnessed an employee using the loading bay incorrectly.

The company – which pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing (10 December 2020) and was prosecuted under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 and Work at Height Regulations 2005 – was ordered to pay £64,392 during the sentencing at Birmingham Magistrates’ Court including the fine, court costs of £4,222 and £170 victim surcharge.

The prosecution was brought following an inspection 5 December 2018, when a number of Improvement Notices were served on the company, to prevent people from falling from the mezzanine staircase landing, mezzanine storage locations and provide suitable loading bay gate on that level.

Pearl Food Distribution was also required to carry out suitable and sufficient risk assessments and provide employees with work at height training.

Councillor Philip Davis, chair of the city council’s Licensing and Public Protection Committee, said: “Falling from height is a well-known cause of serious or fatal injuries and balancing on a forklift to reach goods stored at a high level and failing to prevent a fall from height are good examples of where the health and safety of employees is not being protected in the workplace. Our officers will continue to take action where basic standards of health and safety are not being met or, worse still, flouted.”

The Business Desk
February 2021