A manufacturing company has been fined for safety breaches after a worker suffered severe crush injuries while fault finding on a mesh welding machine. Leeds Magistrates’ Court heard how on 26 January 2016 an employee at Siddall and Hilton Products Ltd was injured while assisting a colleague on the GRS 144 welding machine at the company’s Brighouse premises. To identify a faulty wire on the machine, the worker opened the interlocked gate which stopped the machine and climbed on top of the PV (the part of the machine that creates the mesh from the welded materials). To release the wire the weld head needed to be lifted. To do so, his colleague exited and restarted the machine. As the machine was in automatic rather than manual mode, the PV immediately continued travelling towards the weld head, trapping the worker’s lower left leg. He suffered double compound fractures of his tibia and fibula. He was taken immediately to hospital where he had surgery and has since required further surgery to fuse his ankle in November 2018.