Cleaner burned by chemicals on first day of job

Northern Shire Facilities Management was fined at Teesside Crown Court

A man suffered chemical burns on his first day of a cleaning job because of a company's health and safety failures, a court has heard.

The victim, who required specialist burns treatment at Newcastle's Royal Victoria Infirmary, was left unable to work after kneeling in a corrosive chemical while cleaning on the roof of a McDonald's restaurant in Coulby Newham, Middlesbrough, in 2019.

The wrong product had been used and the cleaning company, Preston-based Northern Shire Facilities Management, provided inadequate protective equipment and training, Teesside Crown Court was told.

The firm admitted failing to ensure the health and safety of an employee and was fined £20,000.

The victim was a trainee ventilation hygiene cleaner who joined the company on 2 September 2019 and was sent on his first job with a supervisor on the following night, the court heard.

The two men were tasked with cleaning the ducts and vents on the roof overnight and should have been using a universal cleaning product, prosecutors for Middlesbrough Council said.

The victim was instead using a more corrosive and caustic oven and drain cleaner which spilled on the roof as he worked.

Skin grafts

It was a wet night and the man believed the puddle he was kneeling in was rain water when, in fact, it was the chemical.

When he got home at about 06:30 GMT on 4 September, he found his knees were injured and he sought medical help, ending up in the specialist burns unit at the Royal Victoria Infirmary, the council's prosecutor said.

The man required two surgical skin grafts for third degree burns, spent a week in hospital and was left unable to kneel or work for a long time.

He was also left with scarring to his legs.

An expert senior occupational hygienist reviewed what happened and concluded:

• The use of the corrosive chemical should have been a foreseeable risk of injury

• The risk of it getting spilled was also foreseeable

• The risks were heightened as the work was being done outside at night in wet conditions

• The overalls the man was given to wear were not waterproof or chemically resistant and were therefore inappropriate for the job

• Risk assessments were neither suitable nor sufficient

In mitigation, Northern Shire's barrister said the firm, which began in 1993 and currently employs about 30 people, was well-respected in the field of industrial cleaning.

He said it had carried out tens of thousands of cleaning jobs and there had only been two previous "reportable" accidents, the Coulby Newham one and another relating to an accident in Kendal which led to no further action, the court heard.

The company said it still did not understand how the chemicals got mixed up, but it had accepted what it got wrong, lessons had been learned and every effort had been made to stop it happening again.

Judge Jonathan Carroll said the man's injures were "extremely serious" and the impact had been "profoundly significant", both physically and psychologically.

He said the company had a "good track history" in health and safety terms and there was "always some degree of risk when using powerful chemicals".

The firm was also ordered to pay more than £24,000 in prosecution costs with the money to be paid within two months.