The Eurotunnel health and safety fine followed an Office of Rail and Road prosecution. It related to a 2018 incident at the company’s UK Channel Tunnel terminal in Folkestone.
Eurotunnel health and safety fine and ORR case
The Channel Tunnel Group Limited (CTGL/Eurotunnel) was fined 2.25 million GBP, according to the Office of Rail and Road. The penalty followed its admission of an offence under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. The Office of Rail and Road investigated the case. It also brought the prosecution. The case involved the terminal’s lighting mast equipment.
Engineering surveyor injury at the Folkestone terminal
On 5 April 2018, an engineering surveyor was hurt at Eurotunnel’s UK Channel Tunnel terminal in Folkestone. The surveyor was standing at the base of one of the lighting masts. At the time, a lighting carriage was being winched to the top of the 18-metre mast. The supporting wires failed. The 115kg unit then fell and struck the surveyor. It caused multiple serious injuries. Objects lying around the site helped break the surveyor’s fall.
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Lighting mast maintenance failure and inspector response
The investigation found that CTGL was responsible for maintaining the lighting masts and the associated equipment. It was also responsible for the premises where they were located. It said the company breached its duty under Section 4 of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. The company failed to ensure that the plant at the site — namely the lighting masts — was safe and without risks to health.
Richard Hines, HM Chief Inspector of Railways, said:
This catalogue of what were entirely preventable maintenance and planning errors led to a truly horrific incident, and my thoughts are with the injured person and their family for the pain and suffering the incident caused, and continues to cause.
It is quite simply astonishing to learn that there were occasions where lighting carriages were winched up and down by staff who had not been appropriately trained, without a suitable safe system of work, that there was no effective preventative maintenance of the lighting mast and its equipment , and that there was a lack of an appropriate risk assessment for that specific task.
This case serves as another reminder to industry that regular maintenance of equipment and thorough and appropriate risk-assessments in carrying out works is crucial to help prevent a repeat of such an event.
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