Two companies have been fined a total of £1.3m over health and safety breaches after a coach driver was killed by a falling window pane.
Mick Ferris, 53, was crushed when a window fell 26 storeys from the Corniche, a luxury development in Vauxhall, London, on 2 October 2018.
The property developer St James Group Ltd was fined £1m and the specialist facade contractor Lindner Prater was fined £300,000 at a sentencing hearing at Inner London crown court on Thursday. The firms were also ordered to pay costs of £125,000 each.
In August, the firms were found guilty of ignoring “foreseeable risks” and convicted of “failing to discharge a duty” under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974.
Ferris, who was a driver for Clarkes of London, had been returning to his coach when the window pane, which weighed 130kg and was roughly 85cm wide and 190cm tall, fell from a height of about 90 metres (300ft).
During the trial, the court heard that a window panel had previously fallen from the same development in August 2017, but that the design had not subsequently significantly changed.
The Corniche, located on Albert Embankment alongside the Thames, has panoramic views over the Houses of Parliament. Luxury flats in the building – containing a gym, pool and spa – have been listed for sale at £3m.
Ferris’s widow, Rachel, said his death “could have happened to anybody” and could have been prevented.
In a statement read out in court, she said: “If somebody had done something differently – anything – it would have changed our lives. One person could have asked: ‘Can’t we do this better?’ What those companies did killed my husband.
“Mick was just minding his own business. One minute there, one minute gone. The thought this could have happened to anybody is always with me. It could have been a child.”
The trial heard that the design of the window in the Corniche was not safe because it opened outwards and was held in place by a single metal restrictor, meaning it could be prised off by the wind.
Mr Justice Boyle said he was not sentencing the firms on the basis of the design itself being unsafe as the windows were “common within the industry” and there was no Health and Safety Executive (HSE) guidance prohibiting their use.
The judge said St James should have been more robust in “ensuring the critical safety component was present and engaged”.
Speaking outside court, HSE’s principal inspector, James Goldfinch, said Ferris “lost his life due to the failings of two leading companies in their field. The fact lessons had not been learned from a near miss the year before makes what happened on that day all the more galling. For a window to fall once was quite extraordinary; for it to fall again was simply criminal.”
A spokesperson for St James said: “The death of Mick Ferris in 2018 was tragic. Our thoughts remain with his family and friends. We acknowledge the court’s sentencing decision and the fine imposed.”