A Staffordshire contractor has been fined after an employee had to have his lower leg amputated after he slipped into an unguarded slurry mixer.

Stafford Magistrates' Court was told that contractor Colin Boon, 55, of West Street, Biddulph, Stoke-on-Trent, was in charge of a gang of road workers sealing a pavement on Wilson Road, Hanford, Stoke-on-Trent, when the incident happened on 13 September 2012.

The injured party, a 36-year-old worker from Stoke-on-Trent, slipped as he climbed from a flat-bed lorry which was next to the mixer.

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He put his left leg down to steady himself but it went through the unguarded opening of the mixer. The moving paddles in the mixer severely injured his lower left leg, resulting in amputation below the knee.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) investigated the incident and found the guard over the rotating paddles in the petrol-powered mixer had been removed the day before the incident and not replaced.

The man was in hospital for two weeks and eventually returned to work for the same employer, but has since moved job because of difficulties with mobility.

Colin Boon of West Street, Biddulph, pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to a breach of Section 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 and was fined £6,700 and ordered to pay £8,000 in costs.

(CD/IT)