Hastings council ordered to pay $65,000 reparation

The council accepted it failed to take all practicable steps to ensure that its employee did not act in such a way as to harm another person. PHOTO / PAUL TAYLOR

Hastings District Council has been fined $29,500 and ordered to pay reparation of $65,000 for breaching health and safety laws after a 4-year-old boy was killed in a tractor-mower incident.

Uetaha Dahtanian Ransfield-Wanoa died on October 8, 2013, when he was run over by a council mower at Kirkpatrick Park in Hastings.

The council pleaded guilty in February to breaching the Health and Safety in Employment Act in relation to the incident and was sentenced in Hastings District Court today by Judge Geoffrey Rea.

The council accepted it failed to take all practicable steps to ensure that its employee did not act in such a way as to harm another person.

In February the council said that since the incident it had reviewed its safe operating procedures for all mowing operators and improved the training and supervision of drivers.

Last year Ross David Pollock, the driver of the tractor, pleaded guilty to driving a vehicle dangerously and on July 11 was sentenced to six months' home detention, 100 hours' community work, disqualified from driving for three years and ordered to pay $5000 reparation.

The senior driver, who and been with the council for 13 years, expressed his regret and was "full of sadness"during his sentencing, after retiring from council duties a month earlier.

Later, Pollock, who had no previous convictions and a clean driving record, successfully appealed the period of driving disqualification imposed.
The three years' disqualification was quashed and a period of 18 months' imposed in lieu.