By David Healey, Senior Solicitor · May 2026

In Hampshire on 14 February 2024, a 32-year-old road planing operator was working a stretch of Wade Road in Basingstoke when the rotating drum of his milling machine caught his foot. He was dragged into the running machinery. Emergency services had to amputate his right leg at the scene to free him.

The protective bow the manufacturer had fitted to prevent exactly that contact was not attached to the machine. The HSE investigation found this wasn’t a one-off — operating without the guard was, in the regulator’s words, “common practice” at the company.

On 13 May 2026, the Leicestershire-based contractor was fined £92,450 at Aldershot Magistrates’ Court for breaching Regulation 11(1) of the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998. That regulation governs every machine in every UK workplace. If you have been injured on machinery where the guard was missing, removed, or wasn’t doing its job, this is the regulation your claim turns on.

What does PUWER Regulation 11(1) actually require?

The regulation has one job: stop people coming into contact with the dangerous parts of machinery. The exact wording is short.

“Every employer shall ensure that measures are taken… which are effective to prevent access to any dangerous part of machinery or to any rotating stock-bar; or to stop the movement of any dangerous part of machinery or rotating stock-bar before any part of a person enters a danger zone.”

Three things are doing the work in that wording. The duty is on the employer, not the worker. The measures must be effective — a sign on the wall doesn’t count. And “prevent access” is the standard — not “make access difficult”, not “warn against access”. Prevent.

The HSE’s official guidance on guarding (HSG129 and PUWER Approved Code of Practice L22) sets out a hierarchy of control. Fixed guards come first. Where a fixed guard is impossible, interlocking guards. Where neither is feasible, other protective measures such as light curtains, two-hand controls, or trip devices. Personal protective equipment sits at the bottom — never the primary protection.

If the manufacturer fitted a guard to the machine when it was supplied, the strong presumption is that the guard should be in use as designed. Removing it, leaving it unfitted, or operating around it shifts the burden onto the employer to prove that an equally effective measure replaced it. In most prosecutions, that proof doesn’t exist.

What counts as a “dangerous part” of machinery?

The phrase has a specific meaning in law. HSE guidance lists the categories that have generated the most prosecutions over the last decade.

• Rotating drums, shafts and rollers — including milling drums, printing rollers, paper machines, conveyor rollers
• In-running nips where two surfaces draw material in (rollers, belts on pulleys, chain and sprocket)
• Cutting and shearing edges — blades, knives, slicers, guillotines, circular saws
• Crushing points — between moving parts and fixed surfaces, between two moving parts, hydraulic rams
• Ejected material — workpieces, swarf, broken tooling, hot or pressurised contents
• Hot or electrified surfaces that present a contact risk during normal operation or foreseeable cleaning

If the injury involved any of the above and a guard could reasonably have prevented or reduced it, Regulation 11 is in play. The question is never whether the part was sharp or fast — the question is whether contact with it was reasonably foreseeable.

Whose fault is it if the guard was never fitted?

The employer’s. PUWER places the duty on the person who controls the workplace and the equipment — not on the worker who uses it.

The law is clear on this point. Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 places the duty to ensure the health and safety of employees on the employer. PUWER 11 specifies what that duty looks like for machinery. Workplace custom, peer pressure, production targets, or supervisor instruction do not transfer that duty to the worker — even where the worker continued to operate the machine knowing the guard was missing.

The Approved Code of Practice (L22) is explicit that supervisors and managers are responsible for ensuring that guards are in place before machinery is operated. If they signed off on a routine that involved running without a guard, they breached the duty on behalf of the company.

What if the guard was bypassed or disabled during my task?

This is a different situation, but the answer is usually the same.

Where a guard exists but has been disabled — interlocks defeated, fixed guards removed, light curtains overridden — the question is who created the situation that required the bypass. If the system of work required the worker to bypass the guard in order to do the task (for example, to clear a blockage, change a tool, or carry out cleaning), the breach lies with the system of work, not the worker. PUWER 11(3) specifically addresses this: where access to dangerous parts is necessary, the system of work itself must be safe.

Where the bypass was the worker’s own initiative, contributory negligence may reduce the compensation by a percentage. It rarely eliminates the claim. The employer’s failure to design and supervise a safe alternative still sits as the primary breach.

What do I have to prove for my civil claim?

Three things, on the balance of probabilities — that is, more likely than not.

1. Duty. Your employer owed you a duty under PUWER Regulation 11(1) and under HSWA 1974 Section 2(1). For employees, this is essentially automatic.
2. Breach. The duty was breached. The machine was operated without an effective guard, the guard was missing, the guard was inadequate for the foreseeable risk, or the system of work required exposure to a dangerous part.
3. Causation. The breach caused or contributed to the injury. You don’t have to show the guard would have prevented every consequence — only that it would have prevented or reduced the harm suffered.

This is much lower than the HSE’s criminal standard, which requires the breach to be proved beyond reasonable doubt. A civil claim can succeed even where a criminal prosecution would not.

They’ll say I should have refused to operate it. Is that right?

It isn’t, and the law has thought this through.

HSWA 1974 Section 7 places a duty on workers to take reasonable care of themselves and others, and to cooperate with their employer on health and safety. That duty exists. But it sits alongside — not on top of — the employer’s primary duty under Section 2 and PUWER 11.

A worker who continues to operate a machine because that is the established working practice, because they were told to, or because stopping would put their job at risk has not breached Section 7. The case law is clear that the worker’s duty is to take reasonable care in the circumstances they find themselves in — circumstances created and supervised by the employer. The employer cannot use the worker’s continued compliance to escape the consequences of its own breach.

If contributory negligence is raised, it tends to result in a percentage reduction rather than a full defence. In machinery cases where the employer breached PUWER 11, contributory findings of 25% or more are uncommon.

How does the HSE prosecution affect my civil claim?

It helps, but a civil claim doesn’t depend on it.

Section 11 of the Civil Evidence Act 1968 means that an HSE conviction is admissible evidence in subsequent civil proceedings. Once the criminal court has found the employer guilty of breaching PUWER 11, that finding is on the record and the civil court starts from it. The employer can challenge causation and the scale of the injury but cannot relitigate whether the regulation was breached.

Where no HSE prosecution has happened — which is the position in most workplace injury cases, because HSE prosecutes only a fraction of incidents — the civil claim still runs. The civil court will assess the duty, breach and causation directly on the evidence in the file. Many successful PUWER claims have no criminal counterpart at all.

The time limit for a civil claim is three years from the date of the injury, or from the date you knew the injury was linked to a workplace breach. Children’s three years run from their 18th birthday.

I’ve been injured by unguarded machinery. What should I do now?

The earlier these four steps happen, the stronger the file.

1. Report the accident in writing. Make sure the workplace accident book records the date, the machine, the task, and the absence of the guard. If your employer doesn’t have a book or refuses to enter it, email the same details to your line manager and keep a copy.
2. Get medical evidence on the day. Attend A&E or your GP. The medical record created closest to the injury carries the most weight in a civil file. Make sure the clinician records the cause as well as the injury.
3. Photograph the machine and the area. The presence or absence of the guard, the danger zone, the warning signage (or lack of it) — all of this can change after the incident. A photograph taken on the day cannot be argued with.
4. Speak to a solicitor — not a call centre. A senior personal injury solicitor will assess whether PUWER 11 applies, what evidence to preserve, and whether the claim has the strength to proceed. Carter & Carter handles every claim at senior solicitor level from the first call.

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