A TEENAGER was engulfed in a fireball when he used petrol to burn scrap metal parts, Redhill Magistrates' Court heard on Tuesday.
The boy, who was 15 at the time, suffered serious burns to his face, neck, chest and arms, with the injuries covering almost a quarter of his body.
He was injured along with another teenager – who also suffered minor flash burns – while working at a site belonging to Grublogger Ltd at Brookside Farm in Salfords on March 24 last year.
Representatives from the Health and Safety Executive told the court that on the day of the incident the boy, one of a number of teenagers being employed by the Tadworth-based company, had been told to burn unwanted parts in a skip using petrol siphoned off from old cars.
The boy had removed his shirt due to the hot weather just prior to the blaze.
He was treated at the specialist burns unit at Broomfield Hospital in Chelmsford before being released. He was warned by doctors that his damaged skin would be extremely vulnerable to the sun.
Grublogger was charged with breaches of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 and the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999.
Speaking after the hearing, HSE inspector Andrew McGill, who established that the work was carried out with the blessing of Grublogger's managing director, who regularly sanctioned this means of scrap metal disposal, said: "This was a wholly preventable incident arising from a clearly dangerous practice that should never have been allowed.
"Young people need careful management and proper supervision in the workplace, with the onus on duty holders to provide additional protection because they inherently lack experience and maturity."
Speaking to the Mirror after the case, Grublogger owner and director Graham Hallett said: "It was a really unfortunate, one-off incident. There is not an awful lot more to say. I had tried to take as many reasonable precautions that I could but at the end of the day what was, was, and the fine that we face is almost certainly going to tip us over into insolvency."
Grublogger Ltd, a company that specialises in the trade of used Jaguar spares, was fined £23,000 and ordered to pay £5,113 in costs after pleading guilty to single breaches of the Health and Safety Act and the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations.
