Key points:
- Halford Commercial Fleet Services was fined £600,000 (about €719,000) plus £24,203 (about €29,000) in costs at Warrington Magistrates’ Court on 3 November 2026.
- A 21-year-old fitter died in August 2024 when a low-profile truck slipped off a bottle jack on the M56 slip road.
- HSE found no proper risk assessment, no instructions on when to recover rather than repair, and no supervision of a fitter licensed for under four months.
What happened on the M56
On 2 August 2024, Niall Fawcett was called out to replace a blown-out tyre on a low-profile truck on the slip road at junction 7 of the M56 near Bowdon, Cheshire. While he was beneath the vehicle, the truck is understood to have slipped from the bottle jack used to raise it and landed on him. He suffered fatal head injuries.
His employer, Halford Commercial Fleet Services Limited (formerly Lodge Tyre Company) of Redditch, pleaded guilty to breaching Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, the general duty to protect the health and safety of employees. On 3 November 2026, Warrington Magistrates’ Court fined the company £600,000 and ordered it to pay £24,203 in costs and a £200 victim surcharge, the HSE said.
“Niall went to work that day and should have been safe, supported and protected. Instead, my son never came home,” his mother Sharon said in her victim personal statement.
The accident itself is the starting point. What makes the case relevant to every haulier, fleet workshop and mobile tyre service is what the investigation found was missing.
Mistake 1: No risk assessment for the job actually being done
HSE found that the company had not properly assessed the risks of replacing a blown-out tyre on a low-profile vehicle. That detail matters. A deflated or blown tyre on a low-profile truck can leave very little clearance, which limits where a jack can go and how stable the lift will be. A generic “roadside tyre change” assessment does not cover that.
Risk assessments should describe the situations crews really face, for example:
- low-profile and low-loader vehicles, and loaded vehicles at maximum weight,
- blown-out or fully deflated tyres,
- slip roads, hard shoulders and lay-bys next to live traffic,
- soft, sloping or uneven ground, rain, ice and darkness.
Mistake 2: No clear “recover, don’t repair” rule
The company had also failed to give employees suitable work instructions, including on when a truck should be recovered rather than repaired at the roadside. Without a written rule, the decision falls on the person on site, often under pressure from a waiting driver, a dispatcher and a delivery slot.
A procedure can set simple stop criteria, such as: the vehicle cannot be lifted on firm, level ground; the jacking point cannot be reached safely; the vehicle cannot be supported with stands or other secondary support; or the location is too exposed to traffic. In any of these cases, the job becomes a recovery.
This is not only the service provider’s business. Operators that call out roadside assistance decide what they ask for. Breakdown contracts, driver instructions and control-room scripts should make clear that the fastest option is not automatically a repair on the spot, and that a fitter who refuses a job on safety grounds will be backed.
Mistake 3: A licence is not experience
According to HSE, Fawcett obtained his licence to work on commercial tyres at the roadside when he joined the company, less than four months before his death. Despite this, he had not been monitored or supervised to check that he was working safely.
For new technicians, and for newly hired drivers who are expected to handle minor roadside jobs, that points to a few basics: pairing them with experienced staff at first, checking their work in the field, and limiting which jobs they can take on alone.
“This case should serve to highlight to employers the importance of properly assessing the risks to which their workers are exposed and providing the right information and instructions, supplemented by adequate monitoring and supervision arrangements,” said HSE Principal Inspector Laura Royales.
Never rely on a jack alone
A good practice guide published by the Society of Operations Engineers with Logistics UK describes working under vehicles supported only by jacks as one of the most dangerous activities in vehicle maintenance. It covers choosing and using axle and chassis stands, checking ground surfaces and vehicle stability, respecting safe working loads, inspecting lifting equipment, and training. HSE’s own guidance, HSG261, stresses safe systems of work and competent staff.
Read also: No parking, so he stopped on the hard shoulder. Now he’s been sentenced
Not just a British problem
The physics of a truck on a jack next to a motorway are the same in Germany, Poland or Romania, and so are the basic legal duties. Under the EU framework directive on safety and health at work (89/391/EEC), employers must assess risks and give workers appropriate instructions and training.
What differs is the size of the bill. In England and Wales, courts set health and safety fines using sentencing guidelines that weigh culpability, harm and the turnover of the organisation, which is why penalties for larger companies regularly run into hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Read also: Insecure loads trigger 2,000 DVSA prohibitions a year and a new guide
