Farmers urged to train staff properly after worker paralysed by falling bale

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) today warned farmers to ensure their workers are properly trained and machinery is regularly inspected and serviced, after a farm worker was permanently paralysed by a falling silage bale.

Burnley farmer Geoffrey Eccles was today fined £10,000 and ordered to pay £10,000 costs at Burnley, Pendle and Rossendale Magistrates' Court today after pleading guilty to a breach of section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act.

The HSE prosecuted Mr Eccles after an incident at Shuttleworth House Farm in Hapton, Burnley, on 10 September 2007. A 21-year-old employee of Mr Eccles suffered permanent paralysis from the waist down when he was crushed by a round silage bale weighing up to a tonne.

HSE agricultural inspector Lisa Bailey said:

"It is essential that all farmers ensure that the equipment they are using is well maintained and regularly inspected to prevent similar tragedies occurring. They must also make sure their employees are trained in safe working practices.

"The HSE recommends that bales should be stacked no more than three high, as this incident illustrates only too well how a wet heavy bale falling from height can cause serious injury."

The employee, a farm labourer, had been working with a colleague stacking round-wrapped silage bales using a telehandler and a bale grab. The bale grab failed while the last bale was being placed at the top of six-bale high stack.

When the worker went to inspect the cracked bale grab, a bale fell approximately six metres from the top of the stack, crushing him and causing paralysis, amputation of a leg above the knee and a broken jaw.