Parcelforce worker gets GBP23,000 award after hand injury

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A PARCEL worker whose hand was crushed by a conveyor belt – and who was then told he was primarily to blame for the accident - has won almost £23,000 in damages.

Michael Tatterton, 57, of Huntington, suffered crush and friction injuries to his right hand after it became caught in a conveyor belt while he was unloading parcels from a vehicle at a Parcelforce depot in Millfield Lane, Poppleton, York, in July 2016.

Mr Tatterton later had to undergo plastic surgery involving a skin graft on to the hand from his leg.


A Parcelforce “attendance review meeting” in November 2016 concluded that his failure to stop the equipment was the “primary cause of the accident,” which led him to be absent from work for 110 days, and he was given an attendance warning, with no right of appeal.

He was subsequently issued with a two-year serious conduct warning.

However, Mr Tatterton used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain a copy of a Health and Safety Executive (HSE) report on an investigation into the accident which resulted in an improvement notice being issued to the company in October, 2016, which stated: “You have failed to take effective measures to prevent access to dangerous parts of the machinery” and ordered that measures should be taken to remedy the contravention.

An HSE official told Mr Tatterton that it was a “requirement of the law to engineer out hazards and not rely upon an action being taken by the operator.”

The official said: “I issued the notification of contravention and also the improvement notice because, although you had been trained in the use of the machine, Parcelforce had failed to ensure your safety via appropriate design and use of a fixed guard.

“Suffice to say that if the guards had been in place, your hand could not get drawn into the gap. Therefore, in my opinion, yes, the machine design was inadequate and was the primary cause of the accident.”

Mr Tatterton said he asked his union, the CWU, to take up the matter.


A union official stated in a letter to the company: “Michael Tatterton has been through hell since the accident, not only through pain and suffering but additionally the trauma and stress of being dragged through the conduct code and attendance procedure, pouring large amounts of salt into his wounds, metaphorically speaking.”

Mr Tatterton said his serious misconduct warning was subsequently reduced to one year and he had now received £22,800 damages in an out-of-court settlement. However, he said that had he not been able to acquire the HSE report through the Freedom of Information Act, he would have been unaware of its conclusions and unable to pursue his claim.

A Parcelforce spokeswoman said the case had been subjected to robust investigation “as the safety of our people is of paramount importance to Parcelforce.”

She said: “The investigations identified the incident was caused by the correct training not being followed and a flaw in the manufacturer’s guarding, which only came to light as a result of the accident.

“We have improved our training to ensure correct procedures are now followed and we also worked with the HSE and manufacturer to improve and rectify the original inadequate guarding.”

She added that the conveyor was as manufactured and supplied by a market leader and was something that other businesses could have purchased.