Definitely a manual handling issue, which is no joke. Manual Handling is usually responsible for about 1/3 of all RIDDOR lost time incidents each year, totalling a significant number of lost days across the U.K.

Your employer must assess the risks, inform you of the risks, act on the mitigations identified in the assessment “as far is reasonably practicable” and then train you in how to work safely in line with the assessment and your role.

The “reasonably practicable” bit is where they have some leeway. In simple terms that’s an assessment of risk vs cost. If they deem the cost of implementing the improvements to be out of proportion with the risk you are exposed to (and can show it’s been assessed) they may claim that they have mitigated the risk to “as low as reasonably practicable” ALARP.

For this particular issue they’ll look at how many people are required to do this task, how often and how many injuries have resulted from it vs how much they will lose in installing new equipment.

Based on you mentioning that a shutdown and lost revenue is required to install the equipment you would need to make this easier, it sounds like they’ve at least assessed it.

Not necessarily helpful with regards to your pain but I just wanted to explain how companies should make decisions about this type of issue.

As others have said, anonymously reporting them might be the way to go. They’ll likely receive a visit from an inspector who can assess all of this too. They certainly won’t let the company off the hook if failings are found.

We are fortunate to have some genuine protections in this country (I’ve worked in places where that doesn’t exist at all in practical terms, despite legislation being in place. Even in Western Europe). They are taken seriously here.