Company fined £60k after workshop found 'caked' in hazardous dust

A Colnbrook stone masonry company has been ordered to pay more than £60,000 for safety failures that included a workshop ‘caked’ in hazardous dust.

Inova Stone Ltd pleaded guilty to breaching health and safety laws and failing to comply with improvement notices at Staines Magistrates Court on Tuesday (May 20).

Health and Safety Executive (HSE) principal inspector Karen Morris Inova Stone Ltd had ‘consistently failed’ to comply with the law and ‘repeatedly showed a lack of commitment’.

Dust seen inside the Inova Stone workshop (image: HSE). 

HSE is the UK’s national regulator for workplace health and safety. It visited Inova Stone nine times over six years before the 2025 court date.

Inspectors on those visits witnessed staff using unguarded machinery, dangerous storage of heavy stone slabs and large amounts of cancer-causing dust.

A HSE statement said ‘the workshop floor was caked in dust, suggesting an absence of effective controls’.

Cutting, chiselling and polishing stone can create a hazardous dust called respirable crystalline silica (RCS).

The dust is very fine and, if inhaled by a person, can cause potentially cause fatal respiratory conditions such as lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or silicosis.

Stone workers are at risk of exposure to airborne particles of stone dust containing RCS, with the risk higher when exposure is prolonged and uncontrolled.

During a 2021 visit, inspectors were left ‘stunned’ after company employees said, ‘no-one was in charge of health and safety’.

Inova Stone was served four improvement notices following that visit – investigators also discovered similar action had been dealt on the company in 2017.

An HSE prosecution over the failures saw the company plead guilty to breaching Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act.

It also pleaded guilty to three charges of failure to comply with an improvement notice.

The company was fined £60,000 and ordered to pay £7,363 in costs at court.

Ms Morris said after the hearing: “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.”

The regulator’s prosecution was brought by HSE enforcement lawyers Jayne Wilson and Rebecca Schwartz as well as paralegal Melissa Wardle.

HSE has updated its guidance for those working on stone worktops and has included a guide of best practice proceedures.

For more information visit tinyurl.com/2bceuf7k