A council representative will appear at South Lakeland Magistrates’ Court on Thursday (October 9) in relation to charges brought by the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) under sections 2(1) and 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974.
Section 2(1) of the Act relates to ensuring the health, safety and welfare of employees, while section 3(1) covers ensuring the health, safety and welfare of members of the public.
A spokeswoman for South Lakeland district council (SLDC) said: “SLDC is being prosecuted by the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) for alleged breaches of the Health and Safety at Work act 1974 in 2010 and 2011. We are unable to comment further at this stage for legal reasons.”
According to the HSE, the prosecution relates to two incidents.
In the first incident on 2 June 2010, 54-year-old member of the public Mary Cooke was fatally struck by a reversing South Lakeland council recycling collection vehicle on Easedale Road in Grasmere. As a result, HSE issued South Lakeland council with an Improvement Notice to ‘risk assess lone worker waste collection rounds’ on 2 November 2010, which the authority later complied with.
According to the HSE spokesman, the driver of the vehicle in question was separately prosecuted by the Crown Prosecution Service for death by careless driving.
Windermere
The HSE spokesman also confirmed that another separate incident on March 17 2011 led to the death of South Lakeland council recycling employee Dorothy Harkes.
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The 58-year-old was killed after colliding with a reversing council recycling collection vehicle while acting as a banksman at St Mary’s CE Nursery and Infant School on Princes Road in Windermere, the spokesman said. The school has since merged with Windermere CE Junior School and is now called St Martin and Mary Church of England Primary School.
Following the incident, the council was issued with an HSE Improvement Notice on May 19 2011 to ‘carry out suitable and sufficient assessment of the provision and specification of reversing aids/hardware on RCVs’ (refuse collection vehicles). The council also later complied with this Notice.
According to the Crown Prosecution Service, Malcolm Collin Sarginson was sentenced to 40 weeks imprisonment and disqualified from driving for three years with an extended retest for the incident in March 2011, after pleading guilty to death by careless driving at Carlisle Crown Court in January 2012.
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