Merlin was fined £5 million, following the June 2015 Alton Towers incident on the Smiler ride. Had the company not pleaded guilty very early the fine could have been upto £10 Million.
Following the case victims said that they were very shocked by how many failures had led to the incident, which could have easily killed them.
Sentencing, Judge Michael Chambers QC described the crash on the £18m attraction as a "catastrophic failure" and said human error was not the cause as was suggested at first.
"This was a needless and avoidable accident in which those who were injured were lucky not to be killed," he said.
I have mentioned in a number of previous legal updates that the new sentencing guidelines to judges, which came into force in February 2016, this was really the minimum that the judge could impose but for Merlin the total actual costs incurred will probably be around £100 million. Lost revenue, legal costs, compensation payments, increased insurance premiums, bad public relations, staff severance payments, staff training costs, will all have contributed to the actual costs incurred. The fine itself will be the tip of the iceberg and on its own for a company with around £250 million profit, not that onerous.
Merlin said that attendance rates had still not recovered to previous levels over 12 months after the incident but the company that owns numerous public attractions around the country such as Thorpe Park, Legoland and Madam Tussauds has still seen an increase in profit overall.
The sentence imposed by the judge following the legal test case against Merlin sends out a clear message. If you fail to control significant risks and expose numerous people to this risk you will be severely financially punished.
Further criminal prosecutions of some of the individual managers and employees involved in the incident could now follow.
16 people were injured including two teenage girls who had to have their legs amputated. Following the incident Alton Towers lost tens of millions of pounds in lost revenues, due to a massive drop in attendances to the previously very popular theme park.
The injured parties had to wait many hours to be rescued, some in severe pain while rescue crews were erecting a scaffolding to access them. Some emergency responders climbed up to treat the injured before the scaffolding was erected. Rescuers reported that blood was dripping down on them as they were working.
I remember when I heard about the incident, I thought immediately that there must have been some serious health and safety failings in order for such a serious incident to have happened in the first place. Alton Towers is less than 30 miles away from where I live and a place I have visited many times. My daughter and son in law had only visited a few days before the incident on the smiler ride and had been on that ride themselves.
The incident happened after a maintenance Engineer bypassed some safety interlocks, which were preventing him from restarting the ride with customers on it because the systems had detected that one of the carriages had become stuck part way round the track.
I have worked on petrochemical sites for many years and it is sometimes required to bypass safety interlocks but I saw many times when this was done the correct checks weren't completed before the equipment was restarted. These practices can easily become custom and practice when large amounts of money are involved when a piece of equipment is not working.
Managers and Directors can become very accustomed to allowing their sub-ordinates to carry out these unsafe acts, in order to keep their business running smoothly. This is a very dangerous path to follow. In order for a very serious accident to happen usually many thousands of the unsafe acts and practices are carried out, sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally.
- The smiler ride should only be operated in wind speeds of less than 35 miles an hour.
- Device for measuring wind speed was not working on the day of the incident.
- It wasn't common knowledge that the wind speed was a serious safety issue with the ride operators.
- One of the empty carriages became stuck partly because the wind was gusting at just under 50 MPH.
- The carriage with passengers on was sent off with the empty carriage still stuck part way around.
- The safety devices on the ride stopped the passenger carriage from entering the part of the track with the stuck carriage on it.
- An additional carriage had been purchased and added to the ride. Not all Alton towers operators and maintenance staff had been aware of this.
- Before the safety devices were overridden the carriages were counted and they thought that all the carriages had returned.
- The safety interlock was overridden by a maintenance engineer, even though CCTV cameras would have shown that the carriage was stuck but this wasn't checked.
- The passenger carriage hit the empty carriage with the force that a family car would have hit at 90 MPH.
- A rescue plan had not been developed, so the injured were stuck on the ride for many hours before rescue could begin.