Tesco fined £733,333 for health and safety breach after 91-year-old breaks hip at Hemel Hempstead store

Supermarket giant Tesco Stores Limited was fined £733,333.33 at Luton Magistrates' Court on 24 January 2020 for breaching health and safety law after a rigorous investigation by our Environmental Health Officers.

Tesco had pleaded guilty at a previous hearing to breaches of its duties under Section 2 and Section 3 of The Health and Safety at Work Act 1974. Those duties required Tesco, so far as reasonably practicable, to operate and manage its stores so as to ensure customers were not exposed to risks to their safety and to ensure the health and safety at work of Tesco staff.

On Monday 6 August 2015, at the Tesco Extra store in Jarman Way, a previously fit and active 91-year-old customer, Dennis Satchell, pushed his trolley into one of the meat and dairy produce aisles and there slipped on pooling watery liquid, which was leaking from refrigerator units. He fell and suffered multiple hip fractures, and had to have surgery to put a femoral pin in his leg. For a man of his years, Mr Satchell was fortunate to survive such an injury and is now unable to bend the leg which had been broken.

Read the full press release from Dacorum Borough Council.