When lessons from a fractured skull under similar circumstances were not learnt
What happened?
A ten year old boy had just been to the cinema with his family when they visited a well-known clothes store.
There was a barrier near the tills to help manage any queues that formed when the shop was busy. It also doubled as a display unit, encouraging impulse purchases The barrier was no more than waist height for an adult and weighed about 110kg. It had been installed three years earlier during a major store revamp.
Despite its weight, the barrier was attached to the concrete floor by only narrow screws, and it visibly wobbled when any force was applied. The screws used were ‘more suited to fixing a picture to a wall’ and were ‘always inadequate’, the court was told. During those three years there had been no tests carried out on the stability of the barrier.
When in the store, the boy was swinging on the barrier when it fell on him. He suffered a fatal head injury.
Six days before the boy’s death, a barrier of the same design, which was entirely unfixed, toppled over in a different branch of the same store, fracturing the skull of a ten year old girl.
And two years before the boy’s death, another unfixed barrier caused serious injuries to a shopper’s foot, which required pinning.
Legal Outcome
With regards to the boy’s fatality: The company who installed the barrier pleaded guilty and was fined a nominal fee of £1,000 for breaching health and safety law. The shop was fined £350,000 and its former owners were fined £650,000 with each paying £530,000 in costs. The company who designed the barrier were found not guilty.
With regard to the girl’s skull fracture: The owner of the shop was fined £450,000.
What can we learn from what happened?
The court had heard that it ‘should have been obvious’ the barrier was a risk to customers. There was CCTV evidence that it wobbled at the merest touch, and this must have been witnessed by hundreds of staff over the three years.
How this accident was left to happen is very hard to understand.
Harder still to understand is how the lesson of the fractured skull six days previously was not learnt. Yes, six days is not a long time, but long enough for a major store chain to communicate and deal with a hazard that was dangerous enough to fracture a skull, so had the potential to kill.
Effective communication, the sharing of information and the consequent management of common risks (these barriers were all the same design) is essential, easy and expected. This tragic accident was recent enough for this communication to be shared at the push of a button, but the store and its parent company either failed in its ineffective communication or its ineffective response. As the judge said, there was ‘no coherent strategy’ to co-ordinate that effort.
All organisations prosecuted are now in liquidation.
Source of Information
BBC News Online
SHP In-Court