Widow’s hope out of tragedy
Reporter: BEATRIZ AYALA
Date published: 26 May 2011
THE widow of an Oldham man who died after being crushed at work, hopes lives will be saved after the company was fined £180,000.
Nigel Lindley (47) was crushed by a 740kg slab of metal while working at the Rochdale plant of gearbox manufacturer Renold Power Transmission Ltd, Station Road, Milnrow, on November 27, 2008.
The father-of-five and grandfather-of-one later died from his injuries at Hope Hospital.
His widow Gail, of Oswald Street, Shaw, had been friends with Mr Lindley since she was six-years-old.
They were partners for 10 years and had been married for 12 months when the accident happened.
Speaking after the case, she said her world collapsed when her husband died and turning off his life support machine was the hardest decision of her life.
Mrs Lindley said: “My husband went to work and didn’t come home.
“No one expects that to happen to them, it should not happen to anyone.
“We have all ridiculed health and safety laws at some time, but until your life is touched by a serious accident or fatality, you don’t realise what health and safety is trying to do to make the work place a safer environment.”
Mrs Lindley said as her husband was the main breadwinner, the family were forced to move out of their family home.
She said she hoped the publicity surrounding the case would help to save other workers lives.
She said: “Justice has been done to a certain degree and this will give us a bit of closure, although it won’t bring Nigel back.
“I hope this will help make people and companies aware, to not let health and safety matters slip through.
“But it shouldn’t take a death for someone to put those measures in place.”
Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court heard yesterday how Mr Lindley had been assembling a large metal gear case at the factory when one of the sides collapsed on him.
He had been using an overhead crane to move two sections of the metal case into place and had removed the chains from one of the sides to secure them together in a vertical position.
However, when he knelt down to hammer a connecting dowel through the sections, one of the sides fell on him.
The court was told how the metal case was the largest ever produced at the site, but employees had not been told how to assemble it safely and the company had failed to properly assess the risks, or to provide training for operators or supervisors.
Following an investigation, the company was prosecuted by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).
It admitted breaching health and safety rules by failing to ensure the safety of its employees.
Phil Strickland, the investigating inspector at HSE, said: “Workers at the site were not told how to safely assemble large gear box cases and so had to make it up as they went along.
“The risks of workers being crushed by heavy objects is well known in the engineering industry but Renold Power Transmission failed to treat the danger seriously by carrying out a proper assessment and providing training.”
James Maxwell-Scott, defending, said during mitigation that there was only a three minute period before the accident occurred when the chains had been released from the slab.
He also said it was “common sense” for staff not to position the slabs vertically, as Mr Lindley had done, when attaching them.
He added that staff training sessions had already been booked before the accident occurred, and the company had since introduced a comprehensive package of measures to stop similar accidents happening again.
Recorder Alan Conrad QC said: “If a safe system of work had been in place, this sad loss may have been prevented.”
The company was fined £180,000 with £8,946.75 in prosecution costs as well as a £15 victim surcharge.
He said the fine would have been £270,000 if it had been a contested case.
A spokeswoman for the company said: “Renold deeply regrets the tragic accident which resulted in the loss of a talented, valued and well-liked employee.
“Renold has since conducted a full internal investigation into the accident, implemented the lessons learned and is confident that the circumstances in which the accident occurred would not occur again.”
