Senior judge blasts safety on Hove site where worker fell to his death

In a seven-page document, the Honourable Justice Mr Mark Wall, a High Court judge, laid bare the shoddy working practices of construction bosses Steven Wenham and John Spiller, who were this week jailed for five years and fifteen months respectively.

The two men’s companies – Total Contractors and Southern Asphalt, which between them employed dozens of city workers – were further ordered to pay nearly £400,000 for breaching health and safety regulations.

The judge noted there was a “slack approach to safety on site” and reminded the court that the duty employers owe employees is an “onerous” one.

Wenham was also disqualified from being a company director for 10 years. No such order was made on Spiller.

The court heard that on July 27, 2018, Graham Tester, of Lewes, and Gavin Hills, his colleague, turned up at work to transport felt up to a roof at the former Dudley Hotel in Lansdowne Place.

The two men carried the rolls of felt – weighing up to 40kg – on their shoulders up to a flat roof.

“They set up a ladder by the side of the building and secured it by doing no more than banging in two nails,” said Mr Justice Wall. “They then used the ladder as a means of access for themselves [and] once on the roof there were no safety barriers in place even though their work involved them working right up to the edge of the roof.”

The site where Graham Tester, 60, fell to his death

It was while carrying a roll of felt from the ground to the roof that Mr Tester overbalanced and fell to his death.

The 60-year-old was described in court by Sally-Ann Tester, his daughter, as a “real people pleaser”.

She also told the court how the family were struggling to deal with the aftermath of Mr Tester’s death, and how difficult it was for them to cope with the fact he had gone out to work one day and never came back.

The judge said it was possible Wenham, 48, of Charlotte Street, Brighton, “pressed for the work to be done quickly and therefore before any safety measures were put in place” as rain was forecast that weekend.

“There was no safe means of their accessing the roof on which they were to work,” he added. “Neither was there a safe way for them to transport up to the roof the rolls of felt they were to lay.”

Graham Tester was described in court by his daughter as a 'real people pleaser'

Addressing Wenham, the judge said: “No safety precautions were taken to protect Mr Tester while he was carrying out a most dangerous job.

“The evidence at trial was that falls from height are the most common cause of deaths on building sites.”

The judge also noted that when the main hotel building was examined after the death of Mr Tester, further health and safety failings were discovered, including “unprotected smoke riser shafts, a platform over the stairwell without adequate protection and missing boards on some external scaffolding”.

The judge added that Wenham knew that when the men turned up there would be no scaffolding or edging in place at that time.

“You had received no risk assessment for the work although you knew full well that one was required,” he told Wenham. “You knew that there was no safe way of the men getting onto the roof or of working on it once they were there.”

The judge told Spiller, 52, of Fishergate Close, Portslade, he took “no precautions to protect your employees while carrying out the most dangerous of work”, adding he was “sure that you carried out no proper risk assessment before you sent Mr Tester and Mr Hills to site”.

In summing up, the judge reminded the court that the duty an employer owes to his employees is an “onerous” one, and that the financial penalties he was imposing were to reflect that responsibility.

In addition to the custodial sentences, Total Contractors, of which Wenham was a director, was fined a total of £210,000, and ordered to pay costs of £30,000, with Spiller's Southern Asphalt fined £120,000, and costs of £20,000.

The building is well-known to locals as the site where James Bond author Ian Fleming wrote Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

During the 1900s a procession of celebrity guests passed through the hotel, which was a magnet for artists, aristocracy, writers and musicians.

James Bond writer Ian Fleming spent a convalescent stay in April 1961 where he conceived Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

In 1999 The Dudley was purchased by newspaper proprietor Sir Ray Tindle.

Like Fleming, Sir Ray was a vintage car enthusiast and sponsor of the Brighton Veteran Car Rally, driving his beloved Speedwell Dogcart with passengers including the American ambassador and members of the Cabinet.

In 2013 the hotel went bust with bank debts of more than £9 million with KPMG called in as receivers.

It was put up for sale in 2015, with planning permission granted to convert the building into luxury flats. 

READ MORE: Construction bosses jailed after worker fell to his death in Hove