Gross Negligence Manslaughter sentence

Gross Negligence Manslaughter sentence for builder – two years imprisonment after pleading guilty to the manslaughter of an inexperienced labourer who was crushed while dismantling a chimney at a house in Yorkshire.

Mr Nigel Parker had employed 23 year old Danny Hough because he was short of workers on the project to extend the home on Thorncliffe Estate, Batley, Kirklees. Mr Parker instructed Mr Hough to use a hammer drill to demolish the chimney from inside one of the property’s bedrooms. Mr Hough was inexperienced and had no building qualifications. Mr Parker then left site to attend a meeting on another site.

A short time later, the residents, who were in the house while the work was being carried out, and bricklayers working outside heard a loud bang. The chimney had fallen down and had buried Mr Hough under two tonnes of masonry. It was established that he died instantly.

The prosecution  told Leeds Crown Court that demolishing the chimney from half way up without any supports had weakened it until the upper part collapsed. The stated that the chimney could have been demolished safely if Parker had supported it with scaffolding or hired a cherry picker so a worker could take it apart from the outside, top down.

When interviewed after the fatal incident, Mr Parker claimed Mr Hough had been told only to sweep rubble. However, it was established that the hammer drill had been hired that day, and the police did not accept his story.

Sentencing, Justice Macduff told Parker:

“What you did is almost unbelievable. It goes beyond incompetence, carelessness and thoughtlessness. You allowed Danny Hough to use a powerful Kango hammer to demolish brickwork from a chimney breast which was supporting a heavier part of the chimney structure above it. Any modicum of thought would have told you that support was necessary.”

“I accept that if you had not been called away when you were, there is every chance that you would have been working in the same situation as the deceased man and would have likely died with him” 

Macduff acknowledged that Parker, who has since lost his home and spent time receiving treatment for psychiatric problems, had already “suffered significant punishment” and was “weighed down by a sense of guilt”. He then went on to state that the seriousness of the offence (which also put the family in the house and others working nearby at risk) merited a custodial sentence.

Parker had pleaded guilty to gross negligence manslaughter and Sections 2(1) and 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act.