26 August 2008

Scottish Coal Fined £400,000 Over Miner Deaths

Scottish Coal has been fined £400,000 for safety breaches that resulted in the death of two employees, admitting two health and safety breaches at a hearing following the deaths of Colin Ferguson, 37, and Brian French, 48, at a Dalmellington mine in East Ayrshire.

Mr Ferguson and Mr French were crushed when the Land Rover they were in collided with a 100-tonne capacity truck at the Pennyvenie open cast mine on February 26, 2007.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) said the "entirely preventable" deaths arose from management failures.

The fine was imposed after the case was brought before Ayr Sheriff Court.

Sheriff John Montgomery said: "The first is a failure to provide a safe system of work for the movement of vehicles and plant at the site.

"The second is a failure to provide operators of all mobile plant with suitable means of communication or other equipment to reduce the risk of collision and injury."

Sheriff Montgomery said that the level of the fine was not intended to represent the value of the lives that were lost and added that any compensation claims could be dealt with by another court.

HSE Inspector Norrie Buchanan said: "These two deaths were entirely preventable and arose from the clear failure of Scottish Coal to provide suitable means of communication between different vehicles on site in order to reduce the risk of collisions, as well as a failure to manage vehicles on their site."

Mr Buchanan added that "as earth-moving vehicles such as dump trucks or bulldozers have poor visual fields due to their large size" it is "crucial that additional steps are taken to ensure that the drivers of these dump trucks are aware of smaller vehicles around them".

Since 2000, more than 2,700 quarry workers across the UK have been injured, and 21 have died.

The HSE said that quarrying remains one of the most dangerous industries to work in.

(DS/JM)