On 22 May 2026, Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy Ltd was fined £600,000 at Grimsby Magistrates' Court after one of its employees was left permanently paralysed from the waist down at the company's wind turbine blade manufacturing facility in Hull. The employee, a 37-year-old woman, was left paraplegic when an 800kg pre-cast blade structure collapsed on her while she and a colleague were preparing it for the next stage of construction. She had worked for the company. She was left unable to walk. And it was entirely preventable.
What happened
The task involved building the web section of a wind turbine blade — a large internal structure that functions like a spine, providing rigidity against buckling in strong winds. The pre-cast section sits at the root end of the blade and is supported by poles during the build process. On 18 July 2024, as the injured employee and a colleague were preparing the section, support poles were removed. Without those poles, the 800kg structure fell towards them.
HSE's investigation found three core failures: the company had not adequately assessed the risks of the task; it had not devised a safe system of work that prevented employees from removing the support poles at the wrong time; and it had not trained its employees properly. Workers were left to develop their own methods. That is not a safe system of work — it is an absence of one.
Why it matters to your business
Wind turbine manufacturing might feel distant from most employers reading this. It isn't. The core failure in this case is one of the most common findings in HSE investigations across every sector: a written procedure existed, but there was nothing to physically prevent workers from bypassing a critical safety step.
Think about your own operations. Where do you rely on workers following a sequence correctly? Where does getting it wrong result in a load dropping, a machine moving, a pressure vessel opening? If the answer is 'they know not to do that' or 'it's in the training', that is not adequate. The absence of an engineered control — a lock, a guard, an interlock, a stored key — is a residual risk waiting to cause harm.
Following the incident, Siemens Gamesa implemented a lock-off system where support poles are physically secured and can only be released by a nominated person holding the key. That system should have been there from the start. It costs a fraction of £600,000.
Three things to do today
- Identify critical task steps in your operations where a wrong action — removing a support, opening a valve, starting a machine — causes immediate, severe harm. These steps need physical safeguards, not just written procedures.
- Review your risk assessments for tasks involving heavy structures, suspended loads, or stored energy. Ask: if a worker skips step 4, what happens? If the answer is 'they get seriously hurt', your control hierarchy needs work.
- Check your training records. Adequate training means workers can demonstrate understanding, not just that they have signed a form. Document competency checks, not just attendance.
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