Inspectors from the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) visited Inova Stone Ltd nine times over a six-year period and found little or no improvement across several areas of concern.
HSE inspectors were left stunned after visiting the company’s premises in Slough in May 2021 when employees told them that ‘no-one is in charge of health and safety’. That visit had come about after concerns had been raised about unsafe working practices.
Inspectors soon saw the complacency for themselves, identifying several breaches of health and safety law, including a failure to control exposure to respirable crystalline silica (RCS).
The workshop floor was caked in dust, suggesting an absence of effective controls.
Stone worktops are becoming increasingly popular in home kitchens. Processing stone, including engineered stone, by cutting, chiselling and polishing, can create dust that contains airborne particle that carry RCS.
There have been calls for the UK to follow the lead of Australia and ban the use and supply of engineered stone to protect workers from silicosis and silica-related diseases. However, the HSE says that existing legislation here is enough. The Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002 (COSHH) (as amended) imposes a legal duty on employers to create suitable arrangements to manage health and safety.
Despite that, companies are still flouting the law. Doncaster-based Warmsworth Stone was fined £18,000 for COSHH breaches in January this year.
Inova Stone appears to have been even worse. As well as failing to protect workers from the potentially deadly dust, HSE inspectors found Inova Stone Ltd routinely allowed employees to use unguarded machinery. In addition, the company also had heavy stone slabs not being stored safely, putting workers at risk of serious injury.
As a result of the inspection, the company was served with four improvement notices, with the resulting HSE investigation revealing similar action had also been taken four years earlier, in 2017.
Inova Stone Ltd of Willow Road, Colnbrook, Slough, pleaded guilty to breaching Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act, as well as three charges for failure to comply with an improvement notice. The company was fined £60,000 and ordered to pay £7,363 costs at Staines Magistrates Court on 20th May 2025.
After the hearing, HSE principal inspector Karen Morris said: “Inova Stone Ltd failed to comply with legal notices requiring them to make improvements and repeatedly showed a lack of commitment to managing health and safety.
“We were stunned when employees told us that ‘no-one was in charge of health and safety’.
“After being provided with advice and guidance over several years, the company had plenty of opportunities to comply with the law, yet they consistently failed to do so.
“The fine imposed should send a clear message to employers that the risks from working with engineered stone must be taken extremely seriously.”
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