‘Lack of training’ at blaze hotel

BOSSES at a hotel where a couple died in a fire were accused of ‘management failure’ yesterday after admitting staff were not trained how to safely dispose of ashes.

Andy Roger, 43, was resort director at the Cameron House hotel, near Balloch, on the shores of Loch Lomond, at the time of the blaze in December 2017.

Simon Midgley, 32, and his partner, Richard Dyson, 38, from London, died.

Night porter Christopher O’Malley emptied ash and embers from a fuel fire into a plastic bag, and then put it in a cupboard of kindling and newspapers, a Fatal Accident Inquiry taking place at Paisley Sheriff Court has heard previously.

The inquiry has also been told there was no written procedure for emptying the open fires after they had been used.

Mark Stewart, QC, acting for O’Malley, said the ‘absence’ of a standard operating procedure ‘left at large staff, who had not been properly trained, to their own devices’ in how they cleaned the fireplaces.

Mr Roger told the inquiry: ‘I would say I don’t disagree with the comment about the document and training, but wouldn’t say they were left to their own devices.’

Mr Stewart told him: ‘I’m not trying to lay the blame at you personally but there seems to have been a management failing at some point in the chain that has led to tragedy.’

Questioned by Crown counsel Graeme Jessop about fire drills at night, Mr Roger said: ‘That was not something we did.

‘That’s something we have done differently... since we re-opened.’

The inquiry, before Sheriff Thomas McCartney, continues.