A WORCESTER manufacturing company has been fined £5,000 after one of its employees suffered horrific hand injuries while operating a lathe.

Andrew Tomkotowicz had to be airlifted to Birmingham's Selly Oak Hospital following the accident at Hampson Engineering, in Navigation Road, Diglis.

At Worcester Magistrates Court yesterday, the company admitted failing to ensure the safety of one of its employees so far as reasonably practicable, following the accident on Wednesday, June 21 this year.

Paul Smith, prosecuting for the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), described how Mr Tomkotowitz had been using emery cloth on a piece of metal tubing when his left arm shot under the machine and smashed into the back plate.

It caused serious injury, he said.

It broke both bones in his left wrist and he had metal plates inserted in them.

He said Mr Tomkotowitz was employed as a welder and should not have been allowed near the machinery.

A publication was recommended to the company about the risks back in 1996.

Mr Smith added that the employee was still off from work and pursuing civil court action against the firm.

Charles Crow, defending, said the company had not deliberately been careless.

This was not a case where the safety system had broken down.

It was failure of a supervisor to ensure that an employee should not have used equipment he had not been trained for.

He said Mr Tomkotowicz had been trying to meet the deadline of an order and that is why he had used the machine.

The works foreman should have prohibited him from using the lathe, Mr Crow added.

The company accepted this and that was why it had entered its guilty plea.

He added that the company had previously had an exemplary safety record. It had never before been reprimanded for not meeting safety standards in its 68-year history.