Justice delayed is justice denied

The investigation into the Didcot Disaster has been in progress for more than seven years. The investigation into the fatalities at Redcar has been running for four years. When will we see justice?

Tuesday 19 September 2023 marked the first anniversary of the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II.   That funeral was attended by an unprecedented 500+ world leaders, such was the esteem in which Her Majesty was held.

Even as a non-Royalist, I can see that she was the best of us: steadfast; resolute; determined; and willing to make sacrifices for the good of the nation and the Commonwealth.   But that only partly explains the widespread grief experienced by those in the UK and beyond.   For many of us, she was omnipresent; the only monarch most of us have ever known.

Today, however, we apparently have a new – and less welcome – constant in our lives:  Unresolved, ongoing and incomplete investigations into demolition and construction site fatalities.

On Tuesday 19 September, when many were thinking back a year to the Queen’s funeral, two families were thinking back exactly four times as long to 19 September 2019 when two workers were killed in horrific circumstances on a demolition project at the former Teesworks facility in Redcar.

Four years – or 48 months, or 208 weeks, or 1,460 days – after that incident, the families of those two men – Tommy Williams and John Mackay – still have no answers.   They are still no closer to any form of resolution or closure.

In the four years that have elapsed since that terrible day, the unnecessary and avoidable deaths of their loved ones have been compounded at every turn.  

Eight weeks after his death, John Mackay was sent a health and safety pack by his employer.   That insensitivity was matched last week by the Health and Safety Executive issuing a statement to say there would be no corporate manslaughter charges because of a lack of evidence.   In itself, that announcement will have been hard to hear.   But John Mackay’s wife Ann had no forewarning of that statement being issued.   She heard about it via email.   There is every possibility that I - a mere journalist - received the bulletin at the same time as the grieving widow.

This case, like the Didcot Disaster before it, raises so many questions and yet offers no answers.

Was the chosen methodology the best and most appropriate or was it merely the cheapest?

Was the client sufficiently qualified to make an informed decision on which tender submission was the best and most appropriate?

Every demolition project is preceded and accompanied by a detailed set of Risk Assessments and Method Statements.   Is there nothing contained within those RAMS that pointed to some fault or shortcoming?

Given that John Mackay was an access platform operator and not a demolition professional, was he given sufficient and adequate training ahead of his involvement in this operation?

Were the ammonia scrubbers on which the two men were working thoroughly investigated prior to their demolition, and were the contents of those scrubbers analysed thoroughly and professionally?

It is, of course, possible that all of these questions (and many more) have already been addressed and answered.   And therein lies another key issue.

Investigating authorities from the police to the HSE are lamentably poor at communicating their findings.   Rather than presenting interim findings, keeping families informed or offering guidance to industry, they sink investigations into a huge, impenetrable black hole.   By the time any light does emerge from that black hole, most of us have forgotten what was being investigated in the first place.

The same cannot be said of the families and friends of those killed at Redcar and at Didcot.   They live with it every minute of every day.   For them, it is not a monarch that is ever-present and constant.   It is grief and emotional suffering that has been needlessly and cruelly protracted.