Events

UK Utility company National Grid has been fined $3m (£2m) after safety failings caused a young boy’s canal death. National Grid owns a huge swathe of Utilities in the North Eastern United States as well as running UK electricity and water infrastructure.

Robbie Williamson, 11, from Burnley in Northern England, died while playing with friends April 2014. The schoolboy fell from an exposed pipeline he was using to cross the Leeds and Liverpool canal, into the water below. National Grid said, adding: “We put guards in place on the gas pipe shortly after the accident and also on other similar crossings throughout our network too.

“We contacted other utility companies to make sure they were aware of what had happened so that they could take action as well.”

Little Robbie was pulled out of the water by neighbour Peter Graham – a former Royal Artillery soldier – and rushed to Royal Blackburn hospital. He died later that day.

National Grid Gas PLC was ordered to pay a seven-figure sum after admitting at Preston crown court it had failed to properly protect the exposed pipeline from the risk of injury from falls.

Judge Mark Brown, sentencing, said the exposed pipe, 3m (9ft 8in) above the water over a concrete surface, was “an accident waiting to happen.”

Brown said: “The pipeline was likely to have been attraction to young boys such as Robbie and was likely to be dangerous when it was wet and slippery.” National Grid did nothing to prevent or deter access onto it, the judge said.

“There is no doubt in my mind that the terrible and tragic death of Robbie has had a deeply profound affect on his parents. There can not be anything worse in life than for a parent to lose their child at such a very young age,” Brown said.

National Grid pleaded guilty to breaching Section 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974. Three boys were able to climb onto the 12in-diameter pipe from a ramped footpath because there had been no access prevention measures fitted. The company was ordered to pay £36,102.90 in costs.

The court had heard at first that National Grid Gas had a procedure for inspecting ground pipe crossings and requirements to block access to the structures. Yet records claimed that the pipe was buried in the bridge structure instead of being exposed – causing inspectors to miss the site and no access prevention measures to be fitted, such as steel “fans”.

Only maintenance work had been carried out on the pipe, in place alongside the bridge since 1903, but records had not been updated. Measures have since been put in place on the site to block access to the pipes.

National Grid said in a statement: “We’re deeply sorry for what happened to Robbie Williamson.”

The schoolboy’s father, Dean Williamson, 38, told The Lancashire Telegraph the …