Warwickshire waste firm fined £3m over two separate deaths

A waste management firm has been fined £3m after the deaths of two workers in separate incidents.

Michael Atkin, 63, from Yorkshire, was crushed by several wastepaper bales at Valencia Waste Management's Northamptonshire site in 2019.

Mark Wheatley, an agency worker, died in 2020 when two skips overbalanced and hit him while working at a depot in Bovey Tracey, Devon.

The firm admitted health and safety breaches in court on Thursday.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) investigated both incidents and prosecuted Valencia Waste Management Limited, formerly known as Viridor Waste Management Limited.

Mr Atkins, from Wetherby, was an HGV driver employed by a different company when he was working at the Grendon Road site in Earls Barton on 10 October 2019.

A Viridor Waste Management Limited employee was using a forklift truck to load his lorry with rows of the bales when some came loose fatally crushing Mr Atkins.

He had been securing the other bales onto the lorry before he was crushed, the HSE said, adding that each bale weighed at least 820kg (1,800lbs).

The HSE investigation found systems in place for drivers to remain within their cabs were not adhered to.

Janet Atkin, Michael's partner, said his death had left "an enormous hole" in her life.

Mr Wheatley was an agency worker with Viridor who was on his second week at the time of his death on 17 January 2020.

He had been using a lorry to lift two skips at the same time, but they fell at an angle onto the back of his lorry and then toppled over onto him when he got onto the lorry bed to rectify the situation, the HSE said.

He managed to call his parents for help and they arrived at the site which was a scene that haunted them to this day, his family said.

"Every single night as soon as I close my eyes, I see Mark lying crushed underneath the skip dead or dying," his mother Sue said.

Viridor Waste Management Limited failed to carry out a suitable and sufficient risk assessment into skip operations, the HSE said.

The firm, based in London Road, Stretton-on-Dunsmore, Warwickshire, pleaded guilty to breaching Section 2 of the Health and Safety at Work Act over Mr Wheatley's death and was fined £2m at Loughborough Magistrates' Court on Thursday.

It was fined £1m at the same court after admitting to breaching Section 3 of the act.

The company was also ordered to pay combined costs of £21,054.

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."

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