Shopping Centre Fined Over a Shared Loading Bay: The Lesson for Property Managers

The forklift operator worked for a grocer in the centre. So did the worker he crushed. The business convicted was the owners corporation that runs the shopping centre. The loading bay they shared was a workplace under the centre's management and control, and an independent risk assessment the centre organised in 2019 had made it aware of the risk and how to control it, but it did not put in measures to separate pedestrians from mobile plant.¹ If you manage a centre, a mixed-use building, or any property where tenants, carriers, and waste contractors share a dock, this case is about you.

What Happened at Springvale Shopping Centre?

In December 2023 a worker employed by a grocer in the centre walked into the shared loading bay to collect a delivery of vegetables. A co-worker was moving stock on a forklift with a load about 1.4 metres high blocking his view, drove forward, and crushed her between the load and the pallet. She suffered chest injuries, including three broken ribs, and spent three days in hospital.¹

WorkSafe Victoria's investigation found the bay had no system of work to separate pedestrians and forklifts, no pedestrian walkways between the building, palletised stock, and the waste compactors, no clearly marked loading and unloading zones, no exclusion zone, and no traffic management plan.¹

Owners Corporation PS:423637R, trading as Springvale Shopping Centre, was sentenced in the Dandenong Magistrates' Court after being found guilty of a single charge over the safety of a workplace under its management and control. WorkSafe Victoria announced on 30 October 2026 that it was convicted, fined AU$60,000, and ordered to pay AU$28,159 in costs.¹ The grocer, KFL Supermarket Pty Ltd, had already been fined AU$43,000 without conviction in January 2026 for failing to provide necessary information, instruction, and training to its employees.¹

Why the Owners Corporation, Not Only the Grocer?

Because it managed and controlled the bay. In Victoria, section 26 of the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 requires a person who has, to any extent, the management or control of a workplace to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that the workplace and the means of entering and leaving it are safe and without risks to health, and the duty applies only to the matters that person manages or controls.⁹² WorkSafe's release does not say which section the centre was charged under. WorkSafe Victoria says the person who manages or controls a workplace can include an employer, the building or site owner, and the property management or tenant of a building or site.³

That is how two businesses were prosecuted over one incident. The grocer employed both workers, so its offence was about information, instruction, and training. The centre controlled the shared space, so its failure was about the space itself: the routes, the markings, the barriers, and the plan.¹ A dock that is common property is not nobody's problem.

Does the Same Duty Apply Under the Model WHS Laws?

The states and territories that use the model WHS laws, which Safe Work Australia says is every jurisdiction except Victoria, carry a similar duty.¹⁰ Under section 20 of the model WHS Act, a person conducting a business or undertaking must ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that the workplace, the means of entering and exiting it, and anything arising from it are without risks to the health and safety of any person, to the extent the business or undertaking manages or controls the workplace, in whole or in part.⁴ Our guide to the duty to consult, cooperate, and coordinate covers how that duty sits beside your tenants' and contractors' duties.

The 2019 Risk Assessment Is the Real Lesson.

WorkSafe's investigators found records showing the centre knew about the risk to pedestrians in the bay, and about the measures available to control it, from an independent risk assessment in 2019. It still did not put in measures to separate pedestrians from mobile plant.¹ The incident happened in December 2023, about four to five years later.

"It baffles me that the shopping centre was so concerned about the risks in its loading bay that it organised a risk assessment, only to ignore the findings and leave workers exposed to the risk of injury or death," said Sam Jenkin, WorkSafe's Chief Health and Safety Officer. He added that control measures must be implemented as soon as a risk is identified, "not years later once someone has been hurt."¹

Read that as a property manager. A risk assessment is not a control. Once it is on file, it is a record of what you knew and what you could have done, and here it had made the centre aware of the risk to pedestrians in the bay and of measures available to control it.¹ The assessment that does its job is the one whose findings have an owner, a due date, and a record of being closed.

The Traffic Management Plan the Court Heard Was Reasonably Practicable.

None of it was new. The court heard it was reasonably practicable for the centre to have reduced the risk with a traffic management plan that included:¹

• barriers, chains, line marking, or similar controls to separate pedestrians and forklifts
• designated pedestrian, vehicle, and mobile plant routes
• pedestrian and forklift exclusion zones.

WorkSafe's advice in the same release, to employers using mobile plant such as forklifts, adds a plan that is reviewed and updated, signage, control of poor visibility, appropriate high risk work licences for operators, inspected and maintained machinery, consultation with employees and health and safety representatives, and "an effective communication system between operators, transport contractors and ground staff".¹ That last point is the one a shared bay is most likely to lack, because the operators, the drivers, and the ground staff work for different businesses.

Worked Example: A Centre Manager on Monday Morning.

A centre manager for a neighbourhood shopping centre with a supermarket, a bottle shop, and a shared rear dock reads the Springvale release. Three carriers deliver before 7 am, the supermarket runs a forklift, and a waste contractor empties the compactors twice a week.

She starts with the file, not the dock. The last risk assessment for the dock is from 2024, with six recommendations. Two were done, two were "noted", and two have no owner. Each open finding gets a named owner and a date, and the two on pedestrian separation go first.

Then she walks the dock at 6.30 am, when the work actually happens, with the supermarket's store manager and the waste contractor's supervisor. They mark a pedestrian route from the back door to the bins, an exclusion zone around the forklift's working area, and a rule that carriers' drivers wait at a painted line until the forklift stops. The traffic management plan records who owns each part: the centre for the markings and barriers, the supermarket for its forklift operators and their licences, and the waste contractor for its truck movements. A copy goes to every tenant that uses the dock, and the plan gets a review date.

What to Do This Week With Tenants and Contractors.

1. Find every risk assessment for a shared area. Loading docks, car parks, plant rooms, and service corridors. Check each finding has an owner, a due date, and evidence it was closed.
2. Walk the dock when it is busy. Look for a marked pedestrian route, loading zones, an exclusion zone, and a plan: four of the five things WorkSafe found missing at Springvale.¹
3. Agree the plan with tenants and contractors. Who runs the forklift, who drives in, who empties the bins, and how they talk to each other.
4. Ask for the operators' licences. A tenant's or contractor's forklift operator should hold the high risk work licence the work requires, and you should be able to show you asked.

Keeping the Findings From Going Stale.

The Springvale problem was not a missing assessment. It was an assessment whose findings were not acted on. In ComplyFlow's contractor management software, the risk register tracks hazards and risks across one or many sites, with controls assigned to each risk and actions tracked against it.⁵ A scheduled risk review can repeat every 1, 3, 6, or 12 months, and it automatically generates an action for each risk, assigned to that risk's owner, to review its controls.⁶ Actions are closed out with a date, whether they were completed, and files or photographs as evidence, and can be transferred to someone else.⁷ Document requirements, such as a high risk work licence, can be assigned to an individual site, so people attending that site are asked for what it needs.⁸ More on how this works for property and facilities management and for facilities managers, and what a hazard register should hold.

A risk you have written down and not fixed is still a risk. After Springvale, it is also evidence.