August 2020 Health and Safety Legal Update:
Case from 15 June 2018
The owner of a fireworks factory in Stafford has been jailed for ten years after two people died during an explosion and fire.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) brought criminal proceedings against Richard Pearson, 44, who owned SP Fireworks on Tilcon Industrial Estate and who is reported to have said “there’s going to be dead [people] in there because of me” after he himself escaped the burning factory.
An accidental ignition caused a mass explosion of fireworks that was reportedly lasted 40 minutes during the evening of 30 October 2014. The result was a blaze that was so intense the emergency services could not rescue Simon Hillier and Stewart Staples who were trapped in the building.
Hillier, who was working with Pearson, and Staples, a customer, both died from smoke inhalation.
An investigation by Stafford Police found Pearson had been I excess of the maximum number of fireworks he was licensed to keep at his site. It said the boxes of explosives had been stored too close together and there had been inadequate control measures to limit the spread of a fire.
Pearson said the explosion could have been caused by faulty electrics, someone throwing a firework through the window or a gas blast.
He denied two counts of gross negligence manslaughter but was found guilty on 22 May following a five-week trial at Stafford Crown Court.
The court was told that on 27 October Pearson had received a delivery from China of 1,141 boxes of fireworks and 18 boxes of mortar firework launchers, these he stored in a container at a farm in Penkridge. On 10 November after the incident Trading Standards and Staffordshire Police visited the storage container and found that 488 boxes were unaccounted for.
Clearly many companies flout health and safety laws and get away with it for many years and if they are lucky indefinitely.
I often use the analogy of driving a car when explaining this to none health and safety experts. You can drive your car daily and never fall fowl of being prosecuted for years. If you are pulled up by a police officer and are found to have bald tyres you may end up with points on your licence and a fine, if no other offences have occurred. But drive with bald tyres, while on a mobile phone, over the drink drive limit and kill someone in a collision, then expect to receive a heavy fine and custodial sentence. That's how health and safety law works, the more things you do wrong which led to the incident, the more serious the consequences.
This incident demonstrates a worst case scenario of what can go wrong, if appropriate risk management is not put into place and the potential consequences following a serious accident.
This is also a test case in its own right. The penalty of ten years in prison for a health and safety offence is unprecedented in its severity.
Although serious health and safety breaches are criminal offences, in reality very few people do go to prison for them. Of the around 140 work related fatal injuries each year, fewer than 10 people are sentenced to a custodial sentence.
The biggest risk to business organisations are taking usually is the potential financial impact caused by a serious incident.
Most organisations don't take into account the many un-insurable costs that result from a serious injury in the workplace. Loss of customers due to bad press, legal costs, increased insurance premiums, fines, poor employee relations, paying sick pay to injured parties, loss of productivity of company investigators, are all mostly outside insurable risks. In fact many businesses fail financially following a very serious health and safety incident.
Allan Compton, prosecuting, said it was likely most of those boxes had been kept at the other location, breaching safety and storage regulations. Pearson denied the claims and said the stock had been sold.
Pearson was badly burned in the fire but managed to escape before telling a witness the factory was “rammed with explosives”. He also said to a paramedic that he was going to prison because “there’s going to be dead [people] in there because of me”, Staffordshire Police said.
Sentencing, Judge Michael Chambers, said: “You’ve known your culpability from the start, but you have chosen to falsely blame others.”
He added that Pearson had “shown little remorse” and demonstrated “arrogant recklessness” for the safety of others”.
Staffordshire Police’s detective inspector Glyn Pattinson, leader of the investigation, said: “Throughout his trial Pearson attempted to offer alternative explanations for the fire which thankfully the jury did not accept. He always sought to blame others and never once took any responsibility for his own actions or showed any remorse for what happened that evening.”
Elizabeth Reid from the CPS added: “Safety regulations and license requirements were flouted by Richard Pearson with devastating consequences. He had many years of experience handling fireworks and would have known full well the dangers that existed in running his business the way he did.
“The CPS presented evidence that had shown that Pearson’s failures caused the deaths of two men and were so serious and so fundamental that they can properly be categorised as criminal.”