A Cornwall sawmill and its managing director have been prosecuted after repeatedly failing to address serious health and safety shortcomings, including a failure to properly train employees operating lift trucks. The case is the latest in a series of Health and Safety Executive (HSE) prosecutions where inadequate training, instruction or supervision has featured prominently.
What happened at Truro Sawmills?
Truro Sawmills Limited supplies timber and manufactures products including gates, fencing panels and garden furniture at its site in Penhallow, Cornwall.
HSE inspectors found several serious health and safety problems. Employees had not been appropriately trained to operate rider-operated lift trucks. Workers exposed to wood dust had not been face fit tested for respiratory protective equipment, and suitable health surveillance was not taking place.
These were significant risks. HSE warns that exposure to wood dust can cause asthma, other respiratory conditions and cancer. Lift trucks are also responsible for around a quarter of workplace transport accidents, with HSE identifying poor supervision and lack of training as common factors.
HSE served three Improvement Notices requiring action. The company failed to comply. Truro Sawmills subsequently pleaded guilty to four offences, including breaching section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 and failing to comply with the Improvement Notices. It was fined £20,000 and ordered to pay £5,000 in costs.
Managing Director Alistair Wright separately pleaded guilty in relation to an Improvement Notice. He was fined £5,000, ordered to pay £2,500 in costs and disqualified from acting as a company director for five years.
Health and safety training is a legal duty
The requirement to train workers runs throughout UK health and safety legislation. The Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 requires employers, so far as reasonably practicable, to protect the health, safety and welfare of their employees. That duty expressly includes providing the information, instruction, training and supervision necessary to ensure employees’ safety.
The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 add more specific requirements. Employers must provide adequate health and safety training when employees are recruited and when they are exposed to new or increased risks, including because of new equipment, technologies, responsibilities or systems of work. Where appropriate, training must be repeated periodically and adapted when risks change. It must also take place during working hours.
There can be further requirements depending on the work involved. Under regulation 9 of the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 (PUWER), people using work equipment must receive adequate health and safety training covering how equipment should be used, the risks involved and the precautions that should be taken. The requirement also extends to employees managing or supervising the use of work equipment.
For lift trucks specifically, HSE expects operator training to contain basic training, specific job training and workplace familiarisation. Even experienced operators should be monitored and may require reassessment or refresher training where unsafe practices develop, equipment or working conditions change, or an accident or near miss occurs. Simply recording that someone attended a course does not therefore resolve the employer’s responsibilities.
Truro is far from an isolated case
Several recent HSE prosecutions show how quickly inadequate training can translate into serious injury and enforcement action.
Just two days before HSE publicised the Truro Sawmills prosecution, clinical waste company Tradebe Healthcare National Limited was fined £300,000 following an incident in which a worker’s arm was severed below the elbow while he attempted to unblock an autoclave machine.
HSE found employees had not been given sufficient information and instruction on using and cleaning the machinery safely. Training was inadequate and employees were not suitably supervised. A colleague restarted the machine while the worker was inside its enclosure. Surgeons spent six hours saving his arm, and he continues to experience pain and restricted movement.
Earlier in August, Wirral Council was fined after a worker suffered broken ribs and a fractured collarbone when a stepladder collapsed. HSE found that unsafe ladders remained accessible to staff and employees had not been trained to assess whether ladders were safe to use. HSE again emphasised the combination of suitable equipment, worker training and robust arrangements for managing work at height.
In April 2026, BA Mobile Fleet Services Limited was fined £30,000 after a worker was crushed by a one-tonne concrete block and required the amputation of his left foot and lower leg. The blocks were being moved with a forklift truck. HSE found that the forklift driver had received no training and had not been authorised by the company to operate the vehicle.
What effective health and safety training looks like
HSE defines competence as a combination of training, skills, experience and knowledge, together with the ability to apply them safely. Employers should consider competence when carrying out risk assessments and deciding what information, instruction, training and supervision workers require.
A defensible health and safety training programme should therefore operate as a system:
Start with risk. Training requirements should flow from the organisation’s risk assessments, roles, equipment and working environment. A generic health and safety course can establish essential awareness, while higher-risk roles will require additional task-specific instruction and practical competency training.
Train people when responsibilities change. Recruitment should trigger training, as should transfers, promotions, new machinery, new processes and material changes to working practices. Training matrices should reflect roles rather than assigning identical courses indiscriminately.
Include managers and supervisors. The ability to identify unsafe behaviour, enforce controls and recognise when additional training is required is itself a competency. PUWER expressly requires adequate training for employees who manage or supervise the use of work equipment.
Assess whether training worked. Completion data is useful evidence, although completion alone does not establish competence. Knowledge checks, practical assessments, observations, incident reports and supervisor feedback can help determine whether employees understand and apply what they have learned. HSE specifically advises employers to ask whether training is relevant and effective.
Refresh training according to risk. There is no universal expiry date for all health and safety training. Refresher requirements should take account of the hazard, changes to work, emerging unsafe practices, incidents and near misses. Regulation 13 requires training to be repeated periodically where appropriate and adapted to changed risks.
Keep evidence. Employers should be able to show what training was required, who received it, when it was completed, what it covered and where further assessment was required. HSE recommends keeping training records to help determine when refresher training is needed.
Training cannot operate in isolation
The recent prosecutions also show the limitations of viewing training as a standalone compliance exercise. An employee cannot be trained out of defective equipment. A forklift certificate cannot compensate for an unsafe traffic management system. An online course cannot replace guarding on dangerous machinery. Respiratory protection is of limited value if equipment has not been properly selected and face fit tested.
Effective training sits within a wider system of risk assessment, controls, supervision, maintenance, monitoring and management accountability. The same principle works in the other direction. An organisation may have detailed policies, carefully drafted procedures and sophisticated safety equipment, yet workers still need to understand the risks and know what they are expected to do.
HSE’s guidance states that everyone working for an organisation needs clear instructions and information, adequate training and appropriate supervision. Employers should also pay particular attention to new starters, employees changing roles, young workers and others who may require additional training or supervision.
How VinciWorks can help with Health and Safety training
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Organisations should know what health and safety training each role requires, whether it has been completed, whether it remains appropriate to current risks and who is responsible for acting when gaps are identified. VinciWorks can help build a health and safety learning plan to roll out training for different staff. Our Learning Management System tracks training records and can demonstrate that courses were assigned and completed.
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