When an HSE Inspector or EHO may be a customer of yours, so actually you could be inspected at any time
What happened?
Local council EHOs carried out an inspection on an inflatable slide at the rear of a pub. There were significant concerns for the safety of children using the slide and for people nearby, and they served a prohibition notice on the pub.
The seams were badly worn and splitting and could fail at any time, causing a child to fall through. If this had happened on the top bed of the slide, children could have fallen nearly 4m to the ground. Worse, internal bed ties could come away from the bed stitching, potentially launching a child into the air.
The slide was not anchored down, there were not enough anchor points on the slide, and most of the ones that were there were in poor repair and faulty. This meant the inflatable could blow away under windy conditions. There was a lack of matting in front of the slide, unguarded access to the blower fan blades, and the rope ladder was loose at the bottom creating risk of strangulation.
To render the slide harmless, officers destroyed it, and disposed to landfill.
Legal Outcome
The owner of the pub pleaded guilty and was given a community sentence, a three month curfew between 8pm and 6am, and ordered to pay £1,800 costs.
What can we learn from what happened?
Whether the EHOs came across this death trap by means of an unannounced inspection is not known. If they were alerted to it by a customer at the pub, then thank you customer.
That customer may, of course, have been an EHO, or indeed an HSE inspector. These enforcement officers live their lives like everyone else, and it mustn’t be forgotten that when you open your facilities to the public, like a pub, shop or leisure centre, you may be subject to an inspection at any time – it is sometimes hard for these people to switch off.
Either way, it was an extraordinary list of potentially life-threatening defects, and a shocking disregard for children’s safety.
The pub in question closed in 2025, and at the time of writing is due to be demolished.
Source of Information
QLM Newsletter