Dust prosecutions should spur manufacturers into action

Below, we look at dust cases prosecuted by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) over the last year in which businesses – and, in one case, a director – were hit with criminal penalties for non-compliance with health and safety laws. We also set out actions manufacturers can take to better safeguard people and reduce their own exposure to legal risks from dust control failings.

What the law says

Under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 (HSWA), employers have a general duty to ensure, as far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare at work of all their employees.

The Act further imposes a duty on employers to ensure, as far as is reasonably practicable, that persons not in their employment who may nevertheless be affected by their business operations, are not exposed to risks to their health or safety.

There are further regulations that specifically address risks posed by hazardous substances that apply to dust.

The Control of Substances Hazardous to Health (COSHH) Regulations 2002 require employers to ensure that the exposure of their employees to substances hazardous to health is assessed and then either prevented or, where this is not reasonably practicable, adequately controlled. There are further requirements around the use and testing of control measures, where prevention is not reasonably practicable.

Guidance produced by the HSE confirms that dust – including silica dust and woodwork dust – is considered a hazardous substance within scope of the COSHH regime and employers’ broader HSWA obligations.

A concentration of fines in 12 months

The HSE has demonstrated its focus on business’ dust control measures by bringing increased criminal prosecutions over the past 12 months. Below, we look at six cases in which fines have been imposed for compliance failings.

The most recent case involved London property developer Nofax Enterprises Limited (Nofax). Last month, it was fined £63,000 and ordered to pay costs of £25,622, after pleading guilty to HSWA offences relating to a range of failures – including not sufficiently addressing risks of exposure to large amounts of silica dust and failing to protect workers from exposure to wood dust.

In total, the HSE had served nine enforcement notices in relation to a single site, including five prohibition notices, and had visited the site four times between 2020 and 2021.

In publicising the outcome of the case, the HSE said exposure to either wood or silica dust “can result in very serious and life threatening health conditions, including asthma, nasal and lung cancers, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and silicosis”.

There have been three other successful ‘dust prosecutions’ by the HSE this year – all coming in January.

Timbercraft Windows & Doors Limited pled guilty to COSHH offences concerning substance controls, including over examination and testing of engineering controls. It was fined £4,000 and ordered to pay £2,792 in costs. Among other things, the HSE identified ventilation issues, failure to have employees face fit tested for protective equipment, and an absence of staff health surveillance measures.

Pendle Woodcraft (Blackburn) Limited also pled guilty to offences relating to wood dust exposure, this time under the HSWA. It was fined £6,000 and ordered to pay costs of £2,926.55. In that case, the HSE had previously intervened on multiple occasions between 2015 and 2023, serving improvement notices on the company, but continued to identify concerns with its working practices. The HSE said the company failed to control the accumulation of wood dust at a site in Lancashire.

HSE inspector Tracy Fox said: “Companies need to be aware that when HSE identifies repeated similar significant failings in the workplace, a prosecution will always be considered.”

In a third January 2025 prosecution, Warmsworth Stone Limited (Warmsworth) was fined £18,000, and ordered to pay costs of £4,064, for “repeatedly” failing to protect workers from exposure to respirable crystalline silica (RCS). The company had been served with seven improvement notices after an initial inspection in May 2023, but by September 2023 the HSE found that five of those notices had still not been complied with.

Warmsworth pled guilty to an HSWA offence of failing to comply with an improvement notice, as well as COSHH offences relating to inadequacies in their control of employees’ exposure to RCS. One of the company’s directors was also fined £1,062 and ordered to pay costs of £3,782 after he also pled guilty to two COSHH offences.

The 2025 cases follow on from two other HSE prosecutions announced last spring, where Esken Renewables Limited (Esken) and Target Furniture Limited (Target) were each fined for wood dust compliance failings.

Esken, a waste and recycling company that runs a wood waste recycling centre in Middlesborough that processes mixed wood waste, hardwood and softwood into biofuel, had been investigated in April 2022 by the HSE over concerns about the spread of wood dust to the surrounding area. The HSE found that the control of the dust “was not adequate and fell short of the expected benchmark”.

In May 2024, Esken was fined £160,000 and ordered to pay £5,310.35 in costs after it pled guilty to a COSHH offence. At the time, HSE inspector Matthew Dundas said: “The expected standard is to control exposure to as low a level as is reasonably practicable.”

A month earlier, Target pled guilty to a breach of COSHH and was fined £14,700 and ordered to pay £4,869.46. The company had been inspected four times in six years prior. HSE inspector Nicholas Moreby said: “The fine imposed on Target Furniture Limited should underline to everyone in the woodworking industry that the courts, and HSE, take a failure to control exposure to harmful substances such as wood dust, and to follow the regulations, extremely seriously.”

Action for manufacturers

There is increasing political will to make sure workers stay healthy and stay in employment. One of the cornerstones of the UK government’s plan for economic growth is getting people into work and staying in work. The government’s recent activity, including its ‘Get Britian Working’ white paper and ‘Keep Britain Working’ review, all point to the expectation that employers have a crucial role to play – and managing dust-related health risks is a vital element in this regard.

In its business plan for 2024-25 (56-page / 1.44MB PDF), the HSE listed silica and wood dust as “health risk priorities”, planning a total of 4,000 proactive inspections as part of a broader initiative to “reduce work-related ill health”, which is a central goal of the 10-year strategy it published in 2022.

On dust generally, it said: “To help industry eliminate risk from breathing dust, we will target all those involved in: commissioning, designing and specifying operations; hiring and maintaining equipment; providing competent advice; measuring and reviewing protective measures.”

“To reduce workers’ exposure, we will build regulatory influence by working with our partners and others in the supply chain. From quarry to construction sites, the focus will be on eliminating risk and substituting with less dusty products and processes,” the HSE added.

The HSE said its plans to reduce work-related ill health will involve enforcement and that its inspections will “enforce preventive controls for occupational lung disease from exposure to respirable crystalline silica, wood dust and isocyanate paints”.

The direction of travel from the HSE, as evidenced not just by its comments in its business plan, but by its actions in bringing prosecutions, is clear: manufacturers should prepare for inspections of their approach to managing dust-related health risks and for enforcement action in the event failings are identified.

Manufacturers are encouraged to consult the HSE’s own guidance on protecting against dust-related health risks in the workplace and, in particular, to consider a range of measures to address the risks arising in the context of their own operations. Measures that should be considered include:

• using a dust lamp, so dust is visible;
• installing dust extraction systems and ensuring that any dust spilled is vacuumed or mopped rather than dry swept or moved using a compressed air line;
• providing adequate respiratory protective equipment and face-fit testing, to ensure it fits staff properly;
• conducting ongoing health checks and health surveillance for employees exposed to wood dust; and
• ensuring local exhaust ventilation used in woodwork is checked at least once every 14 months by a competent person.