A driver of a loading shovel at WRG’s Milton Landfill site in Cambridgeshire has been given a 24-week prison sentence suspended for two years after he reversed his vehicle into a lorry trailer, crushing and killing its driver Mark Nyland from Sutton in Ashfield, Nottinghamshire.

Kenneth Miller, of Linton, was ordered by Cambridge Magistrates Court to pay costs of £600 and given a three month home curfew over the incident which happened in January 2012, after admitting a breach of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974.

After the hearing, HSE inspector Roxanne Barker said: “This was an entirely preventable tragedy that has devastated Mr Nyland’s partner, parents and family.

“HSE took the rather unusual decision in this case to prosecute an individual rather than a company because it was clear that Kenneth Miller had totally failed to take the care that was necessary when operating a large vehicle on a busy waste site.

“Reversing vehicles have been the cause of many fatalities in workplaces over the years and the risks are well known in industry, and obviously companies have a duty to assess risks and implement safety precautions for their sites. But equally, employees have a duty to take reasonable care for the safety of others, particularly when they are operating dangerous machinery.”

This is the second such prosecution of a waste vehicle driver in as many months after a driver of a SITA UK vehicle was last month handed a 36 week prison sentence by Harrow Crown Court for causing the death of a pedestrian in Neasden, London in December 2011, in a separate case prosecuted by the Crown Prosecution Service.