Veolia, the chosen bidder to build the incinerator, recently admitted at a local consultation meeting that with £68 million investment, only 20 local people are likely to be employed. They showed that they do not recruit local people instead opting for agency staff. Records also suggest that they offer insufficient training and fail to look after their safety.
Taken from the back of several serious incidents in the last few years amounting to a poor record on health and safety for its workers and the local public.
Veolia claims that they have learnt from these mistakes…
Veolia fined for burns to ‘vulnerable worker’
30 April 2012
Waste management firm Veolia has been fined after an employee was
seriously burned at an Energy from Waste incinerator in London
The agency worker suffered 17% burns to his body from hot ash while
cleaning a filtration hopper at the Deptford plant on 29 December
2009. The man was in hospital for almost a month.
Veolia pleaded guilty at City of London Magistrates Court to a breach
of the Health & Safety at Work Act for supervisory failings that led
to dangerous working practices. The company was fined £5,000 and
ordered to pay costs of £12,243.
A Health and Safety Executive (HSE) investigation found that the
company failed to follow its own policies and procedures. The court
heard the worker spoke little English and had not been properly
briefed.
HSE Inspector Kerry Williams said the “vulnerable worker” had not been
given “basic information, training or supervision to allow him to
complete his job safely.”
She added: “Veolia operates a high hazard site in Deptford and as such
should ensure its systems are sufficiently robust to ensure people are
not placed at unnecessary risk.”
PREVIOUS CASES
2007
UK. Veolia ES UK Ltd pleaded guilty to two breaches of Health and
Safety Regulations relating to the segregation of hazardous waste and
the appropriate training of staff to handle flammable and combustible
substances. The firm was fined £150,000 after a massive inferno which
closed motorways, schools and brought Preston’s roads to a standstill.
Burning missiles were thrown up to 200 feet in the air as over 132,000
litres of chemicals were set alight in the blaze on July 2 2007. As
fire raged through the site almost 70 firefighters and 10 senior
officers battled for more than eight hours to bring the 30 ft flames
under control. The Fire broke out at the waste handling site on the
Red Scar Industrial Estate at around 6am when lithium batteries
shipped in from the Ministry of Defence in Northern Ireland
spontaneously combusted,
setting fire to oxidisers and organic peroxides which were being
stored nearby. Passing sentence at Preston Crown Court, Judge Stuart
Baker said it was “merciful” that no-one was hurt or killed.
2008
UK. Veolia was fined £13,500 for a major sewage spill which had closed
beaches along the Forth estuary. Around 120 million litres of screened
sewage went into the Forth after a mechanical failure at Veolia’s
Edinburgh pumping station. The same year Veolia was fined £1,000 for
illegally landfilling liquid wastes, with a fine the previous April
for a similar incident related to illegal waste disposal.
2009
UK. Leading waste management firm Veolia Environmental Services and
its contractor Hansen Transmissions (HTL) have been ordered to pay
penalties totalling more than £200,000 after an employee fell 10
metres at a Veolia-ran site in Birmingham.
2009
UK. Veolia Environmental Services (UK) Ltd was ordered to pay to
£166,000 in fines and costs after an incident at its hazardous waste
treatment facility in Bootle, Merseyside. The company was fined
£101,000 and ordered to pay £65,000 costs after an incident at the
facility on April 27, 2006 caused the release of toxic fumes which led
to four members of staff having to receive medical treatment and
several members of the public reporting side effects. Veolia
pleaded guilty to eight charges: three under the Health and Safety at
Work etc Act 1974, one under the Management of Health and Safety
Regulations 1999 and four under section 33 of the Environmental
Protection Act 1990. Charges included failing to ensure the public
were not exposed to toxic fumes and breaching conditions of its waste
licence.
2010
UK. In February 2010 Veolia ES (UK)ltd was fined £130,000 after a
worker was killed near Aylesbury when a 1,100-litre recycling bin fell
on his head. David Ives, 56 from High Wycombe, an employee of Veolia
ES (UK) Ltd was collecting refuse outside a pub in Easington, near
Aylesbury when the incident happened on 5 May 2004. Aylesbury Crown
Court heard that a recycling bin fell from the bin hoist on the
recycling lorry and landed on Mr Ives’ head, killing him. The jury
found the company guilty of breaching sections 2(1) and 3(1) of the
Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974. The company was fined £130,000
and ordered to pay costs of £220,000.
2010
UK. In Kent a Veolia Employee was killed. The company was fined
£225,000 after a litter collector died in a collision between one of
its vehicles and a lorry. Agency worker Damian Griffiths, 20, from
Swanley, Kent died in the accident on the A228 in East Peckham .Veolia
was found guilty of breaching the Health and Safety Act by a jury at
Maidstone Crown Court in August.
This fire’s not worth lighting…
