Contractor on building ripped apart by gas explosion found not guilty of breaching health and safety law

And the firm project managing the refurbishment works avoided being sentenced over the gas explosion - after a magistrates' court judge found that he couldn't be sure the builders did any work on the heating system.

Roderick Standing, 63, was a director of Longwood Building Limited, which in 2013/14 was hired to turn the upper storeys of a building in Chippenham’s Market Place into flats.

The building was owned by Lady Sheila Elizabeth Hester Falloon Ferris, the widow of former High Court judge Francis Ferris, and the renovations overseen by project manager Julian Long, working for Humberts – since known as Prestige EA Ltd.

Four years later, a gas explosion ripped through the top floor flat – leaving tenant Kyle Roe with 90 per cent burns and a one per cent chance of survival.

Investigations traced the cause of the explosion to an uncapped gas pipe behind the wall of a first floor flat. The gas ignited when Mr Roe turned on a light switch.

Standing, a qualified surveyor since 1981 and a man with no previous convictions, had denied breaching health and safety law, but was found not guilty after a three-day trial at Salisbury Magistrates’ Court.

As well as the issues with the gas pipe, Standing was also said to have failed to ensure asbestos regulations were complied with.

District Judge Tim Pattinson found Standing not guilty of the charge against him, describing the surveyor as an impressive witness. “My finding is that he was an entirely honest and reliable witness.”

He said he could not be sure that the gas work had been carried out by Standing or his company, saying: “I cannot be sure to the criminal standard that Mr Standing and LBL did any work on the heating system, other than taking out the boiler and radiators. I find that the items were already disconnected or, put another way, I cannot be sure they were still connected at the commencement of the job.”

Prestige EA Ltd, of St James Parade, Bristol, pleaded guilty last year to breaching the Health and Safety at Work Act. However, the company’s barrister, Dominic Adamson QC, said in light of the finding in Standing’s case Prestige – formerly Humberts – should not be sentenced in connection with the gas.

Mr Adamson said: “The work that Mr Long was doing was as in effect a project manager of the work being done by Mr Standing since Mr Standing’s work do not involve gas work you cannot be satisfied that there was any failing in relation to Mr Long’s project management of Mr Standing’s operation, because that did not form part of the scope of his undertaking on your finding.”

The company had gone into liquidation with unsecured creditors owed £30m. The funds available to the liquidators was just £54,500. Any court fines imposed would have to come out of that sum. Mr Adamson told the court: “The parlous state of the finances means that any penalty that you impose in effect will never be paid.” He pressed for a “peppercorn” or nominal fine.

Michael Veal, for the Health and Safety Executive, said there was an argument that fines should be ordered as a deterrence to others.

Sentencing the company, District Judge Pattinson said: “Mr Long failed to obtain the appropriate asbestos survey – a management survey rather than a demolition and refurbishment survey.” The company was fined £2,000 and ordered to pay £3,120 in costs and surcharge.

A view of the flat after the explosion Picture: GAZETTE AND HERALD

Building

Lady Ferris bought the property in 2002. The four-storey building then comprised of a retail premises on the ground floor, with the three upper storeys given over to storage.

In September 2008, she applied for planning permission through agents Willis and Co to convert the upper floors into four flats. Permission was granted four months later.

However, it was until 2012/13 that building firms were invited to bid to carry out the works and 2013 when chartered surveyor Julian Long of Humberts was hired as project manager.

In a tender specification issued in October 2013, Humberts said the existing gas system would need to be adapted so it only heated the ground floor shop. The existing heating system on the upper floors should be removed.

Building firm Sturland Ltd, for which Standing previously worked, had sent a tender for the works in early 2012. Then, the work to adapt the gas system and “remove remainder” was quoted at £2,760. A year later, LBL quoted a price of £368 for the same work.  

In January 2014, Humberts obtained an asbestos survey of the site. It was a management survey, rather than the fuller refurbishment and demolition survey required. Mr Long said LBL had access to the survey, although Standing would say at his trial that Mr Long – with whom he had worked a number of times previously – had told him the requisite surveys had been carried out and no asbestos had been found.

In April and May, emails were exchanged between the project manager, building owner Lady Ferris and Edward Kirk, owner of the schoolwear shop Scholars on the building’s ground floor, about the gas supply to the shop. He was concerned that he was still paying a gas bill. He was reluctant to disconnect the meter, as there was a significant cost and he was not obliged to do so. LBL was contracted to adapt the gas supply so it only served the ground floor.

Work started in late spring 2014. None of the site workers said they’d received any site induction. They were given no information about gas, the building’s electrics or asbestos.

The project stalled in June when asbestos was discovered and had to be removed by specialist contractors.

Invoices and valuations from LBL pointed to work to adapt the gas supply being carried out between June 5 and November 5, 2014. The work was described as: “Adapt gas to serve GF only. Remove remainder.” Mr Long said his firm would have signed off the work once he saw the boiler had been removed.

At the trial, Standing said the difference in the price between the £2,760 and £368 in the Sturland and LBL quotes related to the difference in work required. The later quote related purely to work to remove a boiler and radiator from the property. He said two gas meters at the back of the property had already been capped and he was unaware of the other meter.

The HSE said it was unclear who if anyone had carried out the work to the gas supply, pipework or boiler. The plumber was adamant he was only asked to work on the water pipes.

Standing took over direct control of the works from October 2014, after which there was no foreman on site. Workers would call Standing for directions.

In July 2015, Lady Ferris was told by Mr Long that Standing had been admitted to hospital. Early the next year, Humberts appointed contractors to complete the works after a lack of progress by LBL.

Scholars left the ground floor premises in March 2017, to be replaced by The Vapour Hut in August. Although they aware of a valve in the shop window, the directors of the business claimed they did not know the shop had a gas supply.

In March 2017, the second and third floor maisonette was let to Kyle Roe and Tierney Lewis. The estate agent’s records showed there was no gas supply to any of the building’s flats so no arrangements were made for Landlord Gas Safety inspections.

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Explosion

It was October 18, 2017. Kyle Roe was on a night shift, so had slept during the day. He woke up at around 6.20pm and went upstairs wearing his boxer shorts. As he trod the stairs he thought he could smell something, but it was only after the explosion he realised it must have been gas.

He turned on the light switch, triggering a build up of gas in the walls to explode. Feeling his body in flames, he tried to get in the shower but his vision was too blurred. He ran downstairs and threw himself on the wet ground outside to try and put out the flames.

A nail technician working nearby heard the bang and found Mr Roe on the ground. She got him into the nail bar, where workers tipped buckets of water over him while they waited for the ambulance.

Paramedics took him first to hospital in Bristol then a specialist burns unit in Swansea. His heart stopped and he had to be put in a medically-induced coma for more than a month. He was on the intensive care ward for three months.

Mr Roe had suffered burns to around 90 per cent of his body. His family was told he had a one per cent chance of surviving the ordeal.

Mr Roe suffered up to 90 per cent burns in the incident 

Firefighters at the scene of the blaze Picture: GAZETTE AND HERALD

Investigation

The gas board, Wales and West Utilities, attended the scene of the explosion.

An emergency control valve in the shop had been switched off by firefighters at the scene. But it took Wales and West’s specialist engineers to find the open end of a gas pipe behind a wall in the bathroom of a first floor flat.

The gas board’s investigators said the emergency control valve had been opened by an unknown person, causing gas to build up behind the bathroom wall in the first floor flat. The gas then rose up to Mr Roe’s flat through the void in the walls. When he switched on the light it caused the explosion.

However, the root cause of the explosion was that the outlet pipe had not been capped when it was disconnected. There was no evidence that the outlet pipe had ever been capped, the prosecution said.

Interviewed under caution by investigators in 2018, Standing said he would do a full health and safety plan and risk assessments, with a copy kept on site. He could not remember doing one for the Market Place scheme, but said he would be surprised if he had not.

Standing was unaware pipework had been hidden behind a stud wall, saying he thought all the gas pipework had been disconnected.

He said the agents, Humberts, had obtained an asbestos survey before the project started. He claimed Mr Long told him there was no asbestos at the property. When LBL was about to start work, its builders discovered asbestos and works had to be halted.

In a follow-up email sent a week later, Standing said whoever cut the gas pipe would have done it before LBL took possession of the site. The information it was given about the location of the incoming gas main was wrong, he said.

Charge

Standing, of Station Road, Corsham, was charged with an offence under sections three and 33 of the Health and Safety at Work Act, namely being an employer failed to conduct an undertaking in a way that persons not in his employment who may have been affected thereby were not exposed to risks to their health and safety.

LBL was dissolved in 2016.