06.07.2007

Inquest adjourned

The inquest into the death of Mark Thornton, 47, of Longridge, due originally to take place this week, but has been adjourned until October 3rd after the hearing was told that police and the Health and Safety Executive's inquiries were not yet complete.

Thornton, a father of two, was killed in March when a mobile crane operated by Bryn Thomas crane hire, tipped over at SHS International, a food distribution warehouse on Wavertree technology park, Liverpool.
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The crane was helping construct a new extension to the food distribution warehouse.

Vertikal Comment

The extended time that HSE investigations take in the UK is a scandal, there must be some valuable lessons to be leant from such incidents but we will not know what they are for a year or two, while the HSE decides on whether to prosecute or not.

In the meantime more innocent workers could be killed.

The whole legal process surrounding accidents in the UK needs changing, instead of focusing on finding someone to blame, it should focus equally on learning lessons and communicating them at the earliest opportunity.

If the HSE does not know at this stage what caused the accident in Liverpool it will never know. The trail is already stone cold and memories are fading fast.

As we have said before why is it that the authorities in Washington state can investigate a large complex crane incident, such as the tower crane accident in Bellevue last November, inform any interested parties of the cause, issue a full report, impose fines and even put a new law into process all within six months, when in the same time the UK can only manage to open the inquest?

The HSE is in a position to demand that the law in the UK is modified to help speed up the process. Or it might even be in a position to do more now if it really wanted to.

There is certainly no law that says it must take six months to determine why a small mobile crane tipped over. It should have known that within the first two hours on site.

It is time for a change