£8,000 fine and £6,000 costs following FLT fatality

A Dunstable company was fined £8,000 and ordered to pay £6,000 costs after a fatal accident involving a fork lift truck at their premises. The driver of the truck was killed in this case and it transpired that he was not 'licensed' to drive the vehicle and should not have been doing so.

It was against company safety policy for untrained operators to drive trucks and it is not known why the victim had taken it upon himself to drive the truck when the supervisor left the work scene.

Despite this the company admitted that it had not taken stringent enough steps to ensure that untrained and unlicensed personnel did not operate such machinery.

The court accepted that in this case the company's level of culpability was low and this was reflected in the comparatively low fine for such a case.