You have recently been appointed as the health and safety advisor at a regional chilled and frozen food distribution depot. The depot receives goods from suppliers, stores them in a chilled store kept at 2°C and a freezer store kept at -25°C, and loads them onto lorries for delivery to supermarkets. It runs 24 hours a day on three eight-hour shifts, but drivers on the night shift often work twelve hours to cover absences.

About 140 people work at the depot. The night shift has 35 workers and one shift supervisor. Around a third of the night shift are agency workers, supplied by a local agency at short notice. Agency workers watch a 20-minute induction video on their first night and then start work. Fork-lift and reach truck drivers on the night shift are paid a bonus for every pallet over their target.

The warehouse aisles are narrow. Pedestrian walkways were painted on the floor several years ago, but the paint has worn away in most places. Two years ago, an inspector from the enforcing authority served an improvement notice on the depot requiring better separation of pedestrians and vehicles. The managing director says the notice was “dealt with” by putting up signs.

Last month, the night shift reported its fourteenth case of damage to storage racking in three months. None of these reports was investigated. When you asked the shift supervisor about them, they told you that “racking damage is just part of the job on nights” and that the drivers are under pressure to hit their targets.

Three weeks ago, a fault developed in one of the evaporator units in the freezer store. The operations manager arranged for a refrigeration contractor to repair it at night, when the freezer is less busy. The contractor’s engineer arrived at 23:30 and signed in at the gatehouse with the security guard, who gave them a visitor badge and directions to the freezer. Nobody told the night shift supervisor that a contractor would be on site. The engineer had worked at the depot before and said they knew their way around. No permit-to-work was issued, and the engineer was not shown the depot’s site rules.

The engineer set up a mobile elevating work platform (MEWP) about halfway along a freezer aisle to reach the evaporator. They did not cone off the aisle, and reach trucks continued to use the aisle while the engineer worked. Two of the four light fittings in that aisle had failed and had not been replaced.

At 03:10, an agency reach truck driver in their second week at the depot reversed out of a racking bay and struck the base of the MEWP. The engineer was thrown against the platform’s guard rail and fractured their wrist. The driver was in the tenth hour of a twelve-hour shift and said afterwards that they had not seen the platform. The night shift supervisor gave first aid, as the only first aider on shift, and an ambulance took the engineer to hospital. The engineer was unable to work for six weeks.

The managing director has asked you for a short report. They believe that safety improvements cost money the business does not have, because margins on food distribution are thin. You know that the depot’s insurance premium rose by 18% at the last renewal, that the largest supermarket customer audits its suppliers’ health and safety every year, and that the agency has started to charge more for night-shift workers because several have left after a few weeks.

While looking into the incident, you notice that the internal door release on freezer door 3 is tied back with tape. The fire alarm test record has gaps of several months. Night-shift workers tell you they have never taken part in a fire drill, and several agency workers do not know where the assembly point is.

You have been asked to present your findings to the managing director and the operations manager next week.