Engineering boss jailed over apprentice death
TWO engineering company bosses have been sentenced for health and safety offences that resulted in the death of a 16-year-old apprentice.
Zaffer Hussain, 59, of Bridgefield Drive, Bury, was jailed for eight months and disqualified from working as a company director for 10 years.
His son Akbar Hussain, 36, also of Bridgefield Drive, Bury was given a suspended sentence of four months in prison and ordered to carry out 200 hours of unpaid community work. He was also given a £3,000 fine.
At a trial at Manchester Crown Court the pair were found guilty of failure of a director or senior supervisor in their duty to provide appropriate health and safety measures which resulted in the death of Cameron Minshull at Huntley Mount Engineering in January 2013.
Bury-based Huntley Mount Engineering was found guilty of Corporate Manslaughter and failing to ensure the health, safety and welfare of employees and was fined £150,000.
Yorkshire-based Lime People Training Solutions, the recruitment firm which placed Cameron Minshull at Huntley Mount Engineering, was found guilty of failing to ensure the health and safety of a person other than an employee and was fined £75,000.
Cameron began working at Huntley Mount Engineering on December 3 2012 after being placed there on an apprenticeship scheme by Lime People Solutions.
On January 8 2013, he was operating a Computerised Numeric Lathe, unsupervised, and having been given no meaningful training.
He was instructed to perform a task which involved him putting his arm inside the machine whilst it was running, which was made possible due to the safety lock on the machine door being disabled. This resulted in Cameron getting pulled into the machine and sustaining severe injuries to his head and face.
A subsequent joint investigation between Greater Manchester Police and the Health and Safety Executive was launched.
HSE inspector Sarah Taylor said: “What happened at Huntley Mount Engineering Ltd was simply inexcusable. Safety devices are fitted to CNC machines for a reason and must never be defeated to allow access to dangerous moving parts.
“Organisations that place apprentices with employers should make checks in proportion to the level of risk present in the workplace. Lime People Training Solutions placed Cameron at Huntley Mount Engineering without conducting even basic checks to ensure that it was a safe and healthy environment for any worker, especially a 16 year old boy.”
