Bosses jailed for dad’s quarry death cover-up
TWO company bosses have been jailed for trying to cover up health and safety failings which led to the death of a young dad.
Benjamin Edge, 25, whose daughter was just two, plunged from the roof of a shed at Fletcher Bank Quarry in Ramsbottom on December 10, 2014.
Mr Edge, from Greenmount, Bury, was employed by SR and RJ Brown and working on the roof with no safety equipment, in wet and windy conditions.
At a Manchester Crown Court sentencing two directors of the company, brothers James and Christopher Brown, both of Gollinrod, Bury, were jailed for 20 months after admitting perverting the course of justice.
James Brown, 32, composed a ‘grossly inadequate’ risk assessment before the job which he did not show to anyone.
After Mr Edge was rushed to hospital he then typed up another risk assessment, which should have been done beforehand. The company admitted corporate manslaughter and failing to ensure the safety of a worker, and was fined £300,000.
Mark Aspin, the boss of MA Excavations, who contracted SR and RJ Brown to carry out the work, was jailed for 12 months after admitting failing to ensure work was managed and planned safely. His firm was fined £150,000 after admitting corporate responsibility for exposing workers to risk. Aspin, 37, of Hameldon Road, Burnley, said he believed the Browns were ‘competent’ and could complete the job safely, but the court heard he did not check their qualifications.
Peter Heap, 34, a labourer who agreed to help the Browns as a ‘favour,’ admitted perverting the course of justice and was given a four-month prison sentence suspended for two years. Heap, of Barrowford Road, Burnley, was asked by Christopher Brown, 25, to go home and collect harnesses to make it look like the accident was Mr Edge’s fault, because he had not worn safety equipment.
“Foolishly, weakly and criminally – as he now realises – Peter Heap went along with what he was told to do,” Mr Justice Openshaw said. The Browns persisted with the ‘deliberate falsifications’ in June 2015, when they maintained that the harnesses had been there before the incident, although they did admit falsifying the risk assessment.
After the hearing, Mr Edge’s mother, Janet Edge, said his family and friends are now serving a ‘life sentence.’ She said: “We have no forgiveness and never will while we have a breath in our bodies.”