Most serious incidents in manufacturing don’t involve new or unusual hazards. They involve the everyday risks that come with normal production: dust from raw materials, heavy loads moved by hand, lifting operations, machinery, inappropriate or non-existent protective equipment and the substances people handle every shift.
That’s what makes HSE prosecutions so useful to learn from. Time and again, the problem isn’t that a business was unaware of a risk. It’s that the controls weren’t good enough, weren’t being followed, or had quietly slipped as processes, equipment and people changed.
For health and safety and operations teams, the real question isn’t just “have we identified our hazards?” It’s “are our controls working on the shop floor today, and do our people know how to apply them?”
What happened in the recent HSE cases?
Dust and manual handling at a food manufacturer
In July 2026, a food manufacturer was fined £120,000 after workers were exposed to hazardous levels of inhalable dust.
An HSE inspection found dust escaping from machinery, compressed air being used to blow down dust deposits, and dry sweeping – practices that spread dust around rather than control it. Monitoring later confirmed that employees had been exposed to inhalable dust above workplace exposure limits. Workers were also routinely lifting 25kg sacks of ingredients by hand.
The company was also ordered to pay £6,270 in costs.
A poorly planned lift at a machine manufacturer
In May 2026, a machine manufacturer was fined £170,000 after an employee’s hand became trapped beneath a three-tonne machine during a lifting operation using a forklift truck. The worker later had two fingers amputated.
HSE found that the lift had not been properly planned or carried out safely. The company was also ordered to pay £7,999 in prosecution costs and a £2,000 victim surcharge.
What these cases have in common
Flour dust and heavy lifts are very different hazards, but neither is new to manufacturing. In both cases the risks were foreseeable. The gap was between knowing about a hazard and controlling it in practice.
A few lessons stand out:
Identifying a hazard is only the starting point. Risk assessments need to translate into practical controls and safe systems of work that people actually follow.
Everyday habits matter. Dry sweeping and blowing down with compressed air can feel like routine housekeeping, but they can increase exposure rather than reduce it.
Non-routine tasks need proper planning. Lifting operations, especially with heavy or awkward loads, need a plan, competent people and clear communication.
People need to understand the ‘why’. Controls are far more likely to be followed when employees and supervisors understand the risk behind them.
Training is one part of that picture. It can’t replace suitable equipment, engineering controls, risk assessments or competent supervision. But it does help people recognise hazards, understand why controls exist and know what’s expected of them. That matters in manufacturing, where processes, equipment and teams are always changing.
The cost of getting it wrong
A fine is only one part of the cost of a health and safety failure. Businesses can also face prosecution costs, investigations, downtime, corrective work and a significant drain on management time.
Where someone is injured or made ill, the human consequences are far greater. Serious incidents can also knock employee confidence and damage an organisation’s reputation with customers, suppliers and the wider industry – not to mention the increased difficulty of attracting and retaining good, skilled workers.
Training won’t prevent every incident on its own. Its role is to make sure the controls you’ve put in place are understood and followed, every shift.
Training as part of prevention
Me Learning offers a range of CPD-accredited health and safety e-learning courses that help manufacturers keep knowledge current without routinely taking whole teams off the production line.
For manufacturers, this includes COSHH and PUWER training and wider health and safety topics. Food manufacturers can also access food safety and hygiene training, including HACCP.
We’re also working towards RoSPA accreditation for a number of our manufacturing courses – more on that soon.
What can manufacturers do now?
Start by reviewing the training you already have in place and asking a few honest questions:
• Does it reflect the hazards people actually face today?
• Do employees and supervisors understand the controls behind your procedures?
• Is training refreshed when processes, roles or equipment change?
• Are non-routine tasks, such as heavy lifts, properly planned and supervised?
This year’s prosecutions are a reminder that familiar risks still need active management.
If you’re reviewing your approach, explore our health and safety courses and see how flexible e-learning can support safer, more consistent working across your manufacturing teams.
