ST HELENS, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM — Duni Poppies Limited has been fined £80,000 after a machinery operator suffered serious hand injuries at its St Helens factory, HSE announced on 5 November 2026. The newly published development is the prosecution outcome, not a claim that the injury happened this week.
Cleaning task exposed accessible rollers
The regulator says the operator, who had eleven years’ experience, was cleaning rollers used to emboss tissue before napkins were folded. Her right hand became trapped, resulting in two full finger amputations and two partial amputations.
HSE found that an interlocked guard was absent, leaving dangerous moving parts accessible during operation. Its release also describes previous enforcement over other guarding issues in 2010, 2014, 2019 and 2021.
PUWER guilty plea heard in Warrington
The company admitted breaching regulation 11(1) of the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998. At Warrington Magistrates’ Court on 3 November 2026, it received the £80,000 fine and £4,756 costs. These are court-imposed amounts.
HSE Blog Analysis
The reported cleaning task is a useful starting point for an equipment review. A production demonstration alone may miss the moments when someone reaches toward a roller to remove residue or resolve a minor interruption. Managers need a method that accounts for those activities as well as normal running.
Experience should help identify awkward work, but it cannot provide the physical separation of an effective safeguard. A review can ask which tasks require access, how dangerous movement is prevented and how defects are escalated before restart. Our machine-guarding guide explains barrier types; our discussion of risk assessments during cleaning and maintenance addresses the gap between a procedure and daily work. This analysis is general and does not add findings to HSE’s case.
Sources and verification
The dated HSE prosecution release is the substantive primary source. An EIN Presswire search extract carrying Liverpool Echo coverage and an Open Court Data UK hearing listing were also checked, but did not provide independently verified sentencing evidence. The preferred five to six independent sources were not obtained; the account of findings and sentence relies on HSE. No accident date is inferred where the release does not give one. The illustration depicts a generic guarded machine, not the equipment involved. HSE’s linked report contains the original machine photograph, which is not reproduced.
Source
Health and Safety Executivepress.hse.gov.uk
