Recycled Material Supplies pleaded guilty to offences under Section 33(1)(a) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act after failing to fulfil duties under Sections 2 and 3 of the Act.
The company was sentenced at Southwark Crown Court on 5 May 2026, where it was also ordered to pay £16,195 in costs.
The case followed an investigation by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), which found employees, agency workers and other people on site had been put at risk of death or serious personal injury.
HSE enforcement lawyer Rebecca Schwartz said “This company put the lives of its workers at danger in a number of ways.
“Given the size and weight of skips, the potential consequences of any collapse were potentially catastrophic.
“The waste and recycling industry has a poor safety record and it is only due to sheer good fortune that nobody was seriously injured or killed.”
Pedestrians put in path of moving vehicles
Inspectors visited the company’s Ashleigh Commercial Estate site on 11 August 2022 and observed multiple health and safety failings.
Various vehicles, including tipper lorries and loading shovels, were operating freely around the yard, while the designated pedestrian entrance had been chained and padlocked.
As a result, pedestrians were forced to use the same entrance route as heavy goods vehicles, with no effective segregation measures, designated walkways or crossing points in place.
Although the company had produced a visual traffic management plan, HSE found it was neither visible to staff nor visitors and had become outdated following changes to the site layout.
Investigators said the plan failed to address key pedestrian movements, including routes across the yard to welfare facilities such as toilets.
Unsafe skip stacks posed collapse risk
The site also had unsafe skip storage practices, with skips stacked as high as three units in some areas. Several of the skips were deformed, increasing the instability of the stacks and raising the likelihood of collapse or falling materials.
The skips had been stacked in areas regularly accessed by workers on foot and by vehicles, creating what HSE described as a significant risk of serious injury or death.
The concerns prompted a further HSE visit 11 days later after improvement notices had been served on the company requiring remedial action within a specified timeframe.
The subsequent investigation found the company had previously been subject to enforcement action.
In 2019, prohibition notices had been issued in relation to stockpiling and risks associated with collapse.
Schwartz added: “The fact this company had previously been made aware of its legal duties, makes this case the more stark.
“We take these failures seriously and will hold those to account who fail to keep their workers and other people safe.”
What on earth is going through someone’s mind to stack those skips like that and think, “Yep, it looks safe”?
It’s absolutely beyond me how the management at that site can just walk by these serious hazards and pretend they don’t exist.
No wonder this industry has such a terrible reputation when it comes to workplace safety.