On 19 October 2009, Montgomery Transport Ltd. was fined a total of £75,000 after pleading guilty at Belfast Crown Court to two breaches of health and safety legislation.
The case was brought by the Health and Safety Executive for Northern Ireland (HSE NI) and relates to an incident that occurred on 5 March 2008 at the company's premises in Newtownabbey, County Antrim. A 23 year-old fitter died when a lorry tyre that he was working on exploded. At the time of the incident he was cleaning the lorry wheel with an inflated tyre attached by applying heat to the metal hub with an oxy-acetylene burner. This practice is known to be extremely dangerous and had been going on for the previous two days with no action on the part of the company to stop it.
A subsequent investigation by the HSE NI revealed that Montgomery Transport had not sufficiently assessed the risks involved in the activity. In addition, they had neither developed an adequate safe system of work or supervised the activities of its employees.
Louis Burns, Head of the HSE NI's Major Investigation Team said, "Companies need to properly identify and address hazards within the workplace. Employees need to have proper training and supervision. This case highlights the dangers of applying heat to wheels which have tyres attached. The outcome will be a sudden catastrophic failure, which in this case proved fatal."
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