In January 2024, Ward Recycling Limited was fined £2.15 million after being found guilty of corporate manslaughter and health and safety offences. Agency worker Dean Atkinson was killed when he was struck and run over by a loading shovel at the company’s site in Hartlepool in January 2020. He had been returning from the site’s welfare cabins to his workstation on the picking line and had to walk across a traffic area. An HSE investigation found the company, which went into liquidation in 2021, had failed to put into place suitable traffic management arrangements.