UK Construction and Law

Suspended sentence for a self-employed operator who reversed without a banksman on a site that had built him a turning circle

By Staff Writer  |  19 August 2026

The principal contractor at Ince, Ellesmere Port had done what the guidance asks: it designed out the need to reverse and provided a turning circle, which was unobstructed on the morning of the accident. A qualified telehandler operator reversed anyway, while using his mobile phone against the site rules he had signed. A lift supervisor was killed and the operator, not the contractor, was prosecuted.

Michael Nixon, 46, a self-employed telehandler operator, was sentenced to 12 weeks' imprisonment suspended for 12 months, fined £800 and ordered to pay £2,000 in costs at Warrington Magistrates' Court on 11 August 2026. He pleaded guilty to breaching section 3(2) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974. The Health and Safety Executive published the outcome on 18 August 2026.

James Connolly, 49, was working as a lift supervisor on a large construction site at Ince, Ellesmere Port. On the morning of 11 June 2023, walking back to his work area from the welfare compound, he was struck and reversed over by the telehandler Mr Nixon was operating, and suffered fatal injuries. His mother and daughter both gave victim personal statements to the court.

The contractor's arrangements were not the failure

The investigation found that the principal contractor had taken steps to minimise the need for reversing on site, including the creation of a turning circle, and that the turning circle was unobstructed at the time of the incident. Mr Nixon was a qualified and experienced operator. He chose to reverse without the aid of a banksman. The investigation also found he had been using his mobile phone while in control of the telehandler, contrary to site rules he had signed up to.

Workplace transport incidents remain one of the biggest causes of deaths in the workplace. It is vital that drivers follow the site rules and do not cut corners and put lives at risk.

Laura Royales, Principal Inspector, Health and Safety Executive

The charge is the point of interest for anyone managing a site. Section 3(2) places a duty on a self-employed person to conduct his undertaking so as to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that persons not in his employment who may be affected are not exposed to risks to their health or safety. It attaches to the individual directly. It does not depend on him having employees, and it does not run through the principal contractor.

That matters because the usual shape of a site transport prosecution is the reverse of this one. Where the segregation is poor, the routes are unplanned or the banksman arrangements exist only on paper, the duty holder in the frame is the principal contractor under regulation 13 of the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015, or the employer under section 2 or section 3(1). Here the arrangements were in place and unobstructed, and the departure from them was the operative's own.

Reversing is designed out, not managed

The regulator pointed to its own guidance on the safe use of vehicles on construction sites, which sets out the risks and the ways of avoiding reversing, together with a checklist of safe working practices for drivers. The order of preference in that guidance is the reason the turning circle existed: remove the need to reverse where the site layout allows, then control what cannot be removed by segregation, signalling and supervision. A banksman is the fallback, not the primary measure.

The practical reading is uncomfortable in both directions. A contractor that plans its traffic routes properly still carries the residual risk that an experienced operator will take a shortcut across them, and the induction and the signed site rules are what make that departure visible afterwards. An operative who takes that shortcut now has a reported example of a suspended custodial sentence attached to it.

The prosecution was brought by the regulator's own enforcement lawyer and paralegal officer, with the investigation supported by a visiting officer.