UK Construction and Law
A near miss with the same excavator ten days earlier cost 40,000 pounds
By Staff Writer | 3 September 2026
A recycling company was fined for a stockpile collapse that injured two members of the public. The same machine had struck a visitor's vehicle ten days before, for want of the very same control, and nothing had changed in between.
PPS Metal Recycling Ltd was fined 40,000 pounds and ordered to pay costs of 6,181 pounds at Grimsby Magistrates' Court on 1 September 2026. It had pleaded guilty at a hearing on 30 July 2026 to breaching section 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, the duty owed to people who are not your employees.
On 6 February 2025 a father and son were unloading scrap metal at the company's Scunthorpe site. A 360 degree excavator fitted with a grab attachment was working nearby. As the machine removed material from a large stockpile, part of the pile collapsed and heavy pieces of scrap fell onto the two men. Both were taken to hospital and one sustained a broken leg.
The twenty minutes before it happened
The investigation found the excavator had been working in close proximity to members of the public for around 20 minutes before the collapse. There were no suitable controls in place to keep the public away from the risks created by moving machinery and unstable stockpiles.
Ten days earlier, on 27 January 2025, the rotating cab of the same excavator had struck the side of a member of the public's vehicle while they were unloading scrap. Nobody was hurt. The investigation identified the same missing control behind that incident as behind the collapse.
Employers must ensure effective arrangements are in place to segregate pedestrians from workplace transport and mobile plant. Had suitable controls been implemented, this incident and the earlier near miss would not have occurred.
Joe Fitzgerald, Health and Safety Executive inspector, who led the investigation
The regulator treated the near miss as evidence, not as an accident that did not happen. A logged near miss with the same machine, the same public interface and the same absent control is a record of a known risk that was not acted on.
What was put in afterwards, and what it says about cost
Following the incident a prohibition notice was served preventing the excavator from operating close to pedestrians. The company then introduced a separate area for public unloading, installed signage, brought in a supervised unloading system and developed a traffic management plan incorporating barriered walkways.
None of that is expensive. A designated unloading bay, some signs, a supervisor and a drawing showing where people walk are the ordinary contents of a traffic management plan on any site where the public and plant share ground. The published guidance on workplace transport safety says pedestrians and vehicles should be segregated so far as is reasonably practicable. The controls that answered the prohibition notice were available at any point before 6 February 2025, and at any point after 27 January 2025 in particular.
Why this reads across to construction sites
The prosecuting body describes itself as Britain's national regulator for workplace health and safety, and section 3(1) is not a waste sector provision. It bites wherever a member of the public can reach a working machine, which on a construction project means deliveries, visitors, adjacent occupiers, a public footpath diverted round a compound and anyone using a site that remains partly open while work goes on. Refurbishment on a live estate and phased handovers produce the same interface as a public weighbridge.
The prosecution also shows how a near miss log is read once something goes wrong. An entry recording a machine striking a visitor's car, followed by no change to the segregation arrangements, is the clearest evidence a regulator can be handed that the risk was known.
The company had the information ten days before the collapse. What it did not have was a plan that kept the two apart.