A mining company has been penalised with a £150,000 fine following the death of an electrician at its underground facility in the Scottish Highlands. Colin Thwaites, a highly experienced mining professional, was fatally injured by fan blades while working at Lochaline Quartz Sand Ltd's mine on the Morvern Peninsula in October 2024.
Mr Thwaites was attempting to restore power after a storm when the incident occurred. A colleague discovered him trapped in the fan with fatal injuries. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE), the UK's national regulator for workplace health and safety, launched an investigation immediately after the incident, arriving at the site the day after Mr Thwaites's death on 21 October 2024.
HSE inspectors uncovered a series of significant safety failures related to the fan. The fan, one of two that had previously formed a single unit, had been modified and separated into two parts. The investigation revealed that the risks associated with this modification were not properly identified or managed. This oversight left the fan's rotating parts dangerously close to its intake guard, with a gap of just 43mm, significantly less than the standard safety requirement of at least 200mm.
Furthermore, inspectors found that a makeshift guard, constructed from two sheets of metal lattice mesh, was poorly designed and in a severely degraded condition, with large sections of mesh missing. The back end of the fan was also left entirely unguarded. The HSE concluded that a properly designed and maintained guard would likely have prevented Mr Thwaites's death.
Lochaline Quartz Sand Ltd, whose head office is registered in Ormskirk, Lancashire, pleaded guilty to breaching the Health and Safety at Work Act. The company was subsequently fined £150,000 and instructed to pay an additional victim surcharge of £11,250 at Inverness Sheriff Court on Tuesday. Following the enforcement action, the firm has engaged a specialist mining consultancy to implement necessary improvements.
Kevin Wilson, HSE's chief inspector of mines and quarries, emphasised the preventable nature of the tragedy, stating that Mr Thwaites, with decades of service, 'should have gone home to his family that day'. The quartz sand mined at the Lochaline site, which is Europe's only quartz sand mine, is primarily used in the manufacture of glass.