An eight year old girl was tragically crushed and seriously injured by a steel gate at her primary school. The HSE investigated and fined the manufacturer of the gate for safety breaches.
The little girl was leaving the school premises after her evening gymnastics class when the incident occurred. As a result she sustained internal injuries and her pelvis was fractured in multiple places. This case was heard at Westminster’s Magistrates Court.
Metalart were the company who installed the manual sliding gate, it was 1.7 metres high and 5 metres long. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) investigated this incident and found that if the gate was opened vigorously the mechanism was not sufficient enough to stop the gate from overrunning, therefore falling over when opened.
On this occasion the sliding gate came off the rollers which were holding it up, the momentum resulted in the gate surpassing the stop mechanism. The end result was that the gate had nothing to hold it in position and therefore it fell. The morning after this incident the manufacturing company changed the stop mechanism and this was verified and deemed safe by a HSE specialist.
The manufacturing company (Metalart Fabrications Limited) did indeed plead guilty and were issued with fines totalling £20,654.
Sarah Whittle HSE inspector spoke after the hearing: “The failure to fit suitable end-stops meant that the gate was an accident waiting to happen and could have fallen on anyone at any time with life threatening consequences.”
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Source: https://press.hse.gov.uk/2020/03/04/surrey-metal-fabricator-fined-after-girl-crushed-by-steel-gate-at-primary-school/
