The tragic death of toddler Saurav Ghai

Published: 10 February, 2011
by RICHARD OSLEY

‘Immeasurable loss’: Town Hall’s £72k fine after fatal wall collapse

A CROWN court judge said that no punishment could make up for the death of Saurav Ghai, the two-year-old crushed by a council estate wall, as she fined the Town Hall £72,000 for health and safety mistakes.

Judge Deborah Taylor said Saurav’s parents had suffered an “immeasurable loss”, adding: “The financial penalty is not intended to measure the value of this life which was so tragically lost.”

She granted a 20 per cent reduction in the fine due to the council’s guilty plea to breaking safety laws.

Camden was specifically prosecuted under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 for failing to check the state of the wall on the Wendling estate in Southampton Road, Gospel Oak, after repair work in 1997, and for not investigating the potential for danger when a similar section of the wall collapsed in 2002. 

The latter should have put Camden “on notice” that it needed to take action over the state of the wall, Southwark Crown Court was told.

The judge said the council had fallen “significantly below” the standard expected of it.

Saurav died in January 2007. He was crushed by the wall as it toppled on top of him as he walked past with his childminder. 

He was rushed to the Royal Free Hospital but died from his injuries.

At just a half-brick thick, the wall, from its original design in the 1970s, was described in court as too “thin for its height”. 

But it was the repair work in 1997 completed by contractors, Chatterton Limited, a firm which now cannot be traced, that was scrutinised in court.

After its collapse, investigators found that the broken panel of bricks had not been “tied or keyed in” to the rest of the wall properly and was effectively free-standing and prone to collapse. 

Workmen had used plastic bags and rubble to pack mortar binds. 

The wall collapsed during high winds but gusts recorded on the day of Saurav’s death were not so strong that properly built walls could be expected to collapse, the court heard.

Camden must also pay £65,000 legal costs after a long drawn out case which has seen several adjournments and a “Newton” hearing – a crown court case without a jury – to decide the extent of the council’s culpability. 

Two days of evidence were heard last month in which it was revealed that contractors largely monitored their own work and “patch” managers gave only superficial, visual checks.

Camden originally pleaded not guilty to health and safety breaches and only entered a guilty plea last October.

At this week’s sentencing hearing, Dominic Kay, appearing for Camden, told the court that the council acknowledged that it must face punishment but said every pound it was fined would come out of the money used to provide public services.

In mitigation, Camden claimed faults with the wall could not have been seen from a visual inspection and that the council thought they had hired competent private contractors to do the repair work.

David Padfield, assistant director of housing management, said: “We are very sorry that the collapse of a wall belonging to Camden Council resulted in the death of Saurav Ghai. 

“We would like to express our deepest sympathy and remorse to his family, particularly at this time. 

“While Camden pleaded guilty to breaching its health and safety duty it also asked the court to consider a number of technical issues relating to the adequacy of the council’s systems of repair and maintenance and the nature and extent of that breach. 

“We will be giving further consideration to the ruling made by the Judge and its implications.”

Checking repair work was ‘like kicking tyres’

 

an imminent danger, even when a similar section fell down in 2002. Alarm bells should have rung then, Camden’s lawyer admitted in court, albeit pointing out that the council had employed external consultants to carry out three stock condition surveys in the years before the collapse.

After Saurav’s death, Camden checked the rest of its council estates and rebuilt another wall in Beaumont Walk, Hampstead. 

David Padfield, assistant director of housing management, said after the Health and Safety Executive’s case drew to a close on Friday: “Camden Council is fully committed to ensuring the safety of residents and those who choose to visit our borough and this is reflected in everything that we do. Since this terrible accident in 2007 we have reviewed all of our procedures to ensure we are doing everything possible to keep people safe.”

The case, however, shone a light on the chaotic system inside the housing department in the 1990s where once a company had won a contract it seemed able to monitor its own work. In some cases, firms were even paid extra fees to check the standard of work as part of their deal.

Former council employee Patrick Campbell, who had no connection with the broken panel but gave evidence in the case to provide an insight into the way repair work was ordered and carried out, said it was likely that the only check of contractors Chatterton Limited’s work would have been a visit to ensure the site had been left tidy.

The wall itself, Mr Campbell said, would probably have been given nothing more than a cursory push, like “kicking tyres after you’ve pumped them up”.

And he said this sort of superficial check was only granted to work which had cost the council more than £1,000 and just 10 per cent of cases under that figure.

The 1997 repair work to the Wendling wall would have fallen below that price threshold.

Before Camden used private contractors it had its own in-house team. It had staff which carried out repairs, supervised work and then inspected it once it had been completed.

It has been argued in the past that this allowed for more accountability and a clear paper trail as to who did what when and to what standard.

Mr Campbell told the proceedings: “When CCT came in, that’s compulsory competitive tendering in the 1990s, companies that were hired were expected to have the same responsibilities. We were told that the contractors in the private sector had the same responsibilities.”

It begged the question whether a single rogue contractor was to blame or the system itself was not stringent enough to detect defects. Writing in today’s New Journal (see page 21), a former long-serving official, Dugald Gonsal, once a chief engineer at the council, said the Town Hall should consider going back to a system where “a group of technical housing professionals, working together, is available to Camden at all times” and without reliance on contractors and subcontractors.

Camden argued in court that it was impossible to “man mark” every workman as they carried out repairs and an element of trust will always come into play. 

There will be a queue of people, not just Mr Sedgwick, and not just Mr Gonsal, warning the council should be more careful who they trust in future.

 

Question remains: just what happened to wall contractors?

 

A NAGGING question which has little prospect of ever being answered: Where in the world are the staff and managers who together made up Chatterton Limited, the contractors who botched repair work to the wall which later killed Saurav Ghai?

It’s as if everybody connected with the company’s operation in London has walked off the face of the earth.

For at least three years it had a tie with Camden Council in the 1990s and the Town Hall put great store in the way the company had come through their rigorous, competitive tendering process. 

It was said in court that this thorough process meant the company could be trusted as a competent contractor. It was even left to check its own work.

Yet if there were documents, invoices and receipts produced at the Town Hall marking their appointment and their work, they have been of little use to investigators trying to trace Chatterton.

No director of the company, nor any staff member who carried out work for it in Camden has given evidence during a series of court hearings relating to Saurav Ghai’s death.

While the Health and Safety Executive successfully prosecuted Camden for its overall responsibility for the wall, the investigation into the work of Chatterton has been closed. The case filed away. It is no longer listed at Companies House, the firm officially dissolved.

The New Journal asked the HSE how far their search for the company’s employees went.

“We checked the register of all trading entities at Companies House and found the contractor had gone into liquidation. Some contact was made with ex-officers of the company from another region but no further information on the London branch was available,” said inspector Michael La Rose. 

“We liaised with Camden Borough Council and it appeared that Chatterton’s London branch only got small jobs from the council. No more information is available.”

If they were ever traced, what answers would Chatterton’s bosses give to investigators? That they have no recollection of who did what on the Wendling wall? Possibly, but the probe won’t even get that far. Camden’s records relating to the fixing of the wall back in 1997 amount largely to a docket with less than specific details about why it was flagged up for repair in the first place. All the council and the HSE know is that somebody from Chatterton was commissioned to do the work. They know now that it wasn’t done properly, but they don’t know by whom.

 

For parents, it was only ever about Saurav

 

THE day Saurav Ghai’s parents walked to the place where their son had been crushed by falling bricks, the paparazzi were lurking, waiting to capture their unimaginable distress. 

In those worst days of Vinay and Desiree Ghai’s lives, every tear was captured. Four years on, those pictures were dredged up again in the national media as a health and safety case against Camden Council slowly reached its final conclusion last month.

A photograph of Desiree wearing dark glasses as she mourned was unnecessarily pushed across the pages of the Daily Telegraph and hardly a report went to the printers without a wild guess made about the salary possibly commanded by Saurav’s father, Vinay. He works in the City. They live in Belsize Park. As they have said privately many times, this has never been about the size of the family’s income, it’s always been about Saurav.

Whatever your occupation, there is no natural training for a media whirlpool like this, not least when you are coming to terms with a tragedy of this magnitude. 

As they stepped across Southampton Road that day in early 2007, the question must have rattled through their heads: what were the chances that little Saurav should be walking past that deathtrap of a wall at the very moment it finally gave way? A million to one? A few seconds later, a few seconds earlier. The misfortune is incalculable.

Yet the more Vinay and Desiree learned about the shoddy repairs and missed opportunities, their anger must have mounted. It should never have been about luck, the wall should not have collapsed like that all. As health and safety inspector Michael La Rose said on Friday: “Saurav should have been able to walk down that road without his life being put at risk.”

In four years of investigations, follow-up investigations, inquests and court cases in which they have had to put up with a fruitless search for missing workmen and witnesses with fuzzy and vague memories, the Ghai family have remained composed and dignified. They donated £10,000 to the Royal Free hospital department that tried in vain to save Saurav’s life.

Even when listening to the most painful evidence and frustrating accounts of the haphazard details of this case, there have been no outbursts.

Requests for interview spreads in Sunday newspapers were very politely declined and they left court on Friday without stopping for the television cameras, making their way home on the tube. What happens next appears undecided. A civil case could still be brought against the council. It is hard to see how Camden could defend itself further after Friday’s judgment. But at two years old, Saurav didn’t have any dependants qualifying for compensation. 

From the media coverage, his parents wanted only that it should in some way  highlight the way things broke down in the council’s housing department and  go some way to preventing another tragedy. 

A warm, thoughtful couple, they have let the harrowing details of this case speak for themselves. It was never about how much they earn. It was always about Saurav.