Valencia Waste Management fined ?3m over fatalities in 2019 and …

Michael Atkin, who was 63 at the time,  and Mark Wheatley, who was 31, died following incidents in 2019 and 2020 respectively at the two separate sites, both run by Viridor at the time.

In a statement on Friday (8 September), the HSE said it investigated both incidents and subsequently prosecuted Valencia Waste Management Limited, formerly known as Viridor Waste Management Limited.

At Loughborough magistrates’ court on 6 September 2023, the company pleaded guilty to health and safety breaches and was fined £1 million for the 2019 incident and £2 million for the 2020 one.

Valencia took over the running of Viridor’s landfill sites last year (see letsrecycle.com[1] story[2]), shortly following Viridor’s sale of its entire landfill and landfill gas business to Frank Solutions Ltd.

Alan Hughes, senior enforcement lawyer at HSE, said: “These were two men at different stages of their lives, but the grief and pain across both families is devastating.

“Both deaths were avoidable. More needs to be done to make the use of vehicles on waste and recycling sites safer. We have a wealth of advice and guidance freely available.”

Waste paper

According to the HSE, Mr Atkin, from Wetherby, lost his life while collecting a load of wastepaper bales at Valencia Waste Management Limited’s Grendon Road site in Earls Barton, Northamptonshire, on 10 October 2019 (see letsrecycle.com[3] story[4]).

The 63-year-old, a HGV driver employed by RT Keedwell, had been working at the site with a then-Viridor employee, who was using a forklift truck to load Michael’s lorry with rows of bales, the HSE said.

The regulator added that with three rows of bales already loaded onto the lorry, the other employee then attempted to load a fourth row.

However, while loading the fourth row, some bales in the third row were dislodged and fell off the lorry, fatally crushing Michael. It seems Michael had been securing the other bales onto the lorry before he was crushed, the HSE noted. Each bale weighed at least 820kg.

Skip

Mr Wheatley died following an incident on 17 January 2020 at the Dartmoor National Park Conservation Works depot in Bovey Tracey, Devon (see letsrecycle.com story[5]).

The 31-year-old, who was from Sutton Coldfield but lived in Teignbridge, Devon, was an agency worker on his second week, according to the HSE’s statement.

 Mark Wheatley and his partner Keeley Martin

He had been using a lorry to lift two skips at the same time, deploying a method called ‘hot swapping’. However, the skips were not compatible, as they were of different dimensions, and fell at an angle onto the back of Mark’s lorry. He then got onto the lorry bed to rectify the situation but the skips overbalanced and fatally struck him.

References

  1. ^ letsrecycle.com (www.letsrecycle.com)
  2. ^ story (www.letsrecycle.com)
  3. ^ letsrecycle.com (www.letsrecycle.com)
  4. ^ story (www.letsrecycle.com)
  5. ^ letsrecycle.com story (www.letsrecycle.com)

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