Severn Valley Railway handed £88,000 court bill after painter's 13ft fall

The heritage railway was charged with two counts of failing to discharge general health, safety and welfare duty to employee after an accident in 2021.

Kidderminster Magistrates Court was told on Friday that on February 22 of that year, an employee fell while painting carriages in the railways' Bridgnorth yard.

The carriage painter was carrying out the work alone and not wearing a safety harness, when they fell from approximately 13 feet, hitting a metal storage cabinet before landing on a concrete floor.

They suffered six broken bones in their lower back and also suffered neck injuries.

An investigation by the Office of Rail & Road found that Severn Valley Railway had failed to put in place recognised standards of protection when working at height, while safe systems of work and appropriate instruction, planning and supervision were not present when the repainting was carried out.

District Judge Strongman said the defendant “fell woefully below the standards expected”.

A case was brought against Severn Valley Railway PLC by His Majesty's Inspectorate of Railways and SVR was charged with failing to ensure the health, safety and welfare at work of all its employees and failing to implement its own working at height policy during the incident.

The heritage line, which last year was forced to make staff redundant and launch a Survival Fund due to financial difficulties, was fined £40,000 by Kidderminster Magistrates Court for the two breaches of health and safety.

SVR was also ordered to pay costs of £48,000.

Richard Hines, HM Chief Inspector of Railways, said: “This is yet another avoidable working at height incident at a heritage railway which resulted in very serious injuries. My thoughts are with the individual concerned.

“Our inspectors have recently met with heritage operators across the sector to reinforce expectations of them around the proportionate safety arrangements that must be followed in order to carry out such maintenance tasks, because, sadly, these types of incidents remain too common. Poor standards are unacceptable and will not be tolerated."

SVR’s managing director, Jonathan ‘Gus’ Dunster, said it accepted the findings of the court and expressed sorrow to the family of the person affected.

"Now proceedings have been completed, we have the first opportunity to express publicly to the person affected and their family how sorry we are that this accident happened. We accepted the findings of the judge outlined in court.

"The Severn Valley Railway fully acknowledges that shortcomings in our safety management system existed when the accident happened in February 2021.

"In the three-and-a-half years since the incident happened, we have put in place a raft of measures to try and prevent anything like this happening again. An established health and safety department is now driving safety improvements across the railway and there has been a universal step change in safety culture at the SVR, transforming the way our paid staff and volunteers work.

"As part of our continual improvement process, we regularly review our internal policies and procedures, and are providing a significantly greater level of training and supervision for our paid staff and volunteers.

"Although the SVR is seen primarily by many people as a heritage attraction, we are first and foremost an operational railway, and must abide by the same regulations and safety standards as the main line railway.

"We were encouraged that the District Judge acknowledged the important role played by heritage railways in general, and the SVR in particular, to education, the community and the regional economy. He stressed that he wanted the fine to be appropriate in relation to the incident but not to damage our ability to continue our work and our ongoing recovery."