Cleanzine: your weekly cleaning and hygiene industry newsletter 9th July 2026 Issue no. 1218
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Fine for waste company that stockpiled skips and put workers at risk
A waste and recycling company in South East London has been fined after the Health & Safety Executive found multiple failures, including skips unsafely stacked sometimes three deep, (with some deformed, adding to their instability) in an area regularly accessed by workers either on foot or in vehicles.
Inspectors visited Recycling Material Supplies on Ashleigh Commercial Estate in Greenwich in August 2022. When they arrived, they observed various vehicles, including tipper lorries and loading shovels being driven freely around the site. The pedestrian entrance was chained and padlocked, with pedestrians forced to use the vehicle entrance route used by lorries and other vehicles. There was no effective segregation by designated pedestrian routes or crossing points.
Health & Safety legislation requires workplaces to be organised so that pedestrians and vehicles can circulate safely. Where large vehicles must reverse, employers must consider additional precautions and implement them where appropriate to protect those working nearby.
Although the company had a visual traffic plan, it was not visible to staff or visitors and was out of date because the site configuration had changed since it was produced, meaning it did not address key pedestrian movements such as access across the yard to toilets.
The concerns led to a further visit 11 days later after a number of improvement notices were served requiring the company to take action within a specified timescale to remedy breaches of law. The subsequent HSE investigation found that the company had previously been the subject of enforcement action, with prohibition notices served in 2019 in relation to stockpiling skips creating risks of collapse.
Recycled Material Supplies, of Building 3, Ashleigh Commercial Estate, 87 Westmoor Street, London, failed to fulfil duties under Section 2 and Section 3 of the Act by putting employees, agency workers and other persons on site at risk of death and/or serious personal injury and pleased guilty of two offences under s33(1)(a) of the Act.
The company was fined £167,000 and was ordered to pay £16,195 costs at a hearing last month at Southwark Crown Court.
"This company put the lives of its workers at danger in a number of ways," notes HSE enforcement lawyer Rebecca Schwartz. "Given the size and weight of skips, the potential consequences of any collapse were potentially catastrophic.
"The waste and recycling industry has a poor safety record and it is only due to sheer good fortune that nobody was seriously injured or killed. The fact this company had previously been made aware of its legal duties, makes this case the more stark.
"We take these failures seriously and will hold those to account who fail to keep their workers and other people safe."
Relevant guidance can found at:
25th June 2026