A North Yorkshire company making innovative machinery fitted with the latest safety devices failed to protect its own workers from the risk of injury as they manufactured them, magistrates were told.

Lambert Engineering Ltd of Station Estate in Tadcaster pleaded guilty at Selby Magistrates court to a breach of health and safety legislation after an HSE Inspector found widespread instances of protective guards on factory floor machines either being removed or disabled. In some cases, safety devices had been altered by employees to allow machines to operate unsafely.

The company employs around 115 people, designing and manufacturing machinery for the pharmaceutical and food industries. The issues came to light after a preventative visit by HSE Inspector Geoff Fletcher in May last year.

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The court heard there was an endemic weakness in safety management systems at Lambert Engineering. The key failings were poor risk assessment of processes, a lack of control and supervision of workers and a culture whereby the company failed to carry out checks to make sure safe practices were fully in place.

The company admitted the charge of a breach of Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety At Work etc Act 1974 and was fined £6,000 and ordered to pay £4,198 in costs.

After the case, Inspector Geoff Fletcher, said: "The company failed to ensure that their machines and specifically the safeguarding mechanism were maintained effectively, allowing dangerous practices to develop and remain unchecked over some ten years.

"It is more by luck and certainly not by good management that an injury did not occur at the plant. This is a company offering bespoke machines, which themselves offer top quality safety devices. I trust they will endeavour in future to focus equally on ensuring their own safety guards are used as the manufacturers intended and in line with legal requirements."

(CD/KMcA)