Pair fined £1.3m after window fell from London penthouse killing passer-by below

Two companies have been fined a combined £1.3m after a window unit fell from the 26^th floor of a luxury development in London, killing a coach driver on his break as he walked below.

The incident happened at around 10.30am on 2 October 2018 – at the time Mick Ferris, 53-year-old father and grandfather, had been on a break and was just returning to his coach, which was parked up nearby.

One of the bespoke windows weighed 130kg with the unit falling 300 feet from the Corniche development on the capital’s Albert Embankment to the ground below, killing Ferris instantly.

St James Limited, part of the Berkeley Group, had been the developer of the Corniche as well as the principal contractor and principal designer. Specialist contractor Lindner Prater Limited was hired by St James to design the penthouse windows.

The pair were found guilty of health and safety breaches last month and yesterday at the Inner London Crown Court St James was fined £1m and ordered to pay costs of £125,000. Lindner Prater was fined £300,000 and ordered to pay costs of £125,000.

The HSE said that at an early stage of the design process, the windows had been changed from opening inwards to opening outwards, meaning if they detached, they would fall onto a pedestrian area – but they were never effectively risk assessed.

The safety of the windows relied on the performance of a single restrictor, held in by a single screw, and none of the fittings had been confirmed by their manufacturers to be suitable for the bespoke curved penthouse windows.

In August 2017, more than a year before the fatal incident, a window left open in windy conditions fell from the same penthouses during construction, nearly hitting two workers.

St James led an internal review into the 2017 near miss but records obtained by the HSE showed key noted areas of concern were not followed up effectively.

The HSE said that it was only after Ferris’s death, that the windows were redesigned to open inward and the public walking below the penthouses were no longer at risk if a window was left open.

HSE lead inspector Andrew Verrall-Withers said: “Two companies – widely seen as leaders in their fields –failed to respond to an obvious risk and tragically this cost the life of a man simply going about his day.

“Both times a window fell, the wind speeds were not unusually high.

“Even after a window had fallen in 2017, luckily just missing workers below, sufficient attention was not given to assessing the risk of the windows detaching and falling if left open in windy conditions. Too much reliance was placed on adding a small sign to the windows, in effect hoping the residents would not forget to close windows.”

“The construction industry should pay attention to this tragic case. Principal designers need to pay careful attention to clarifying exactly what services architects, designers, and consultants will provide, and then effectively monitor their performance to ensure related risks are identified and coordinate necessary improvements.

“The investigation assessed the involvement of multiple companies, thousands of documents and highly complex technical evidence.”

In a statement, Ferris’s wife Rachel said: “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 fact this could have been prevented, I just can’t explain. If somebody had done something differently – anything - it would have changed our lives.

“I know it wasn’t just one person, but one person could have changed this. One person could have asked ‘can’t we do this better?’”