A roofing company breached safety regulations before the devastating Christie hospital fire of 2017 - but will not be prosecuted.
Instead the Health and Safety Executive has issued a 'contravention notice' on the firm.
The HSE concluded after a three and a half year investigation that the company breached construction regulations but decided it did not warrant a prosecution.
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The HSE concluded after a three and a half year investigation that the company breached construction regulations but decided it did not warrant a prosecution.
Instead it issued a Notice of Contravention (NoC). The HSE charges £160 per hour for the issuing of the notice.
The blaze broke out on April 26th 2017 and at its height 32 fire engines were dispatched to what was declared a major incident.
The Paterson building, used as a research centre by the University of Manchester and Cancer Research UK was badly damaged. It was later demolished and is being rebuilt at a cost of £150m.
Years of valuable research and equipment were lost in the blaze, and more than 300 scientists and support staff were relocated.
Manchester Evening News readers responded by raising £104,000 for Cancer Research UK.
Insurance companies have paid out a total of £17m for the damage.
Following a huge investigation, a report, released in January 2018, concluded the fire was caused by welding work on the roof.
Now the Manchester Evening News can reveal the Health and Safety Executive later took action against the company involved.
The Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service report revealed:
- The fire may have started while contracted workers were on a tea break
- The fire was not discovered for 30 minutes
- Hot debris from welding fell down the side of a wall unnoticed and landed on cardboard and fabric
- After the fire, unknown people gained entry to the roof of the damaged building without permission and removed power tools and hand tools
The M.E.N. understands a smoke and fire alarm for the floor where the fire started had been switched off.
The report was released following ‘extensive’ forensic investigation, interviews and reconstructions, fire chiefs said.
Bosses at the company which carried out welding work, Helix Roofing Contractors Ltd of Wallasey, Merseyside, said they disagreed with its findings, which they dubbed merely a ‘hypothesis’.
“It appears that someone has to be blamed even if there is no clear evidence,” they said in a statement in January 2018.
The firm said its workers are ‘conscientious and well-trained’ and that it does not believe they caused the fire.
In a statement issued to the Manchester Evening News this week the HSE said: “HSE carried out an investigation into the fire that occurred at the Christie Hospital in 2017.
"The investigation concluded in October 2020, and as a result of its findings a Notification of Contravention (NoC) was issued to Helix Roofing Contractors Ltd.”
A Health and Safety Executive spokesperson said: “A full investigation was carried out and the evidence gathered was considered carefully.
"As a result it was determined that Notification of Contravention (NoC) should be issued; we identified breaches in relation to the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015, namely that there were issues in relation to combustible materials where welding was taking place, as well as fire watch arrangements.
“The investigation concluded in October 2020 with all actions completed.”
The HSE said evidence was considered against the Code for Crown Prosecutors to see if a prosecution was justified.
But based on the information gathered they concluded that a NoC "would be the most appropriate form of enforcement action."
The NoC specific breaches identified relate to, Regulation 29 (1) (a) and Regulation 13 (1) of the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015.
Regulation 13 (1) says: "The principal contractor must plan, manage and monitor the construction phase and coordinate matters relating to health and safety during the construction phase to ensure that, so far as is reasonably practicable, construction work is carried out without risks to health or safety."
Regulation 29 (1) (a) says: "Suitable and sufficient steps must be taken to prevent, so far as is reasonably practicable, the risk of injury to a person during the carrying out of construction work arising from - (a) fire."
The HSE says: "An NoC is issued when a material breach is identified. A material breach is something which an inspector considers serious enough that they need to formally write to the business requiring action to be taken to deal with the material breach. If the inspector gives you a notification of contravention (NoC) after their visit, you'll have to pay a fee.
"The NoC must include: the law that the inspector considers has been broke; the reason(s) for their opinion; notification that a fee is payable to HSE.
"If the company has already put measures in place to address the material breach then the NoC would state that the matters have already been addressed, but if actions were still needed then they would ask the duty holder to give some evidence/feedback that the matter had been addressed within an appropriate timeframe."
The fire broke out on the third floor of the building, which was in use at the time and housed a plant room, a corridor filled with electrical units, an office and sterilisation rooms.
The GMFRS report said workers from Helix Roofing Ltd had cut through the roof to fix a metal post to a metal beam.
It said: “Whilst conducting the welding, hot drips from the process and hot used rods dropped down through the hole.
“They fell down the side of the wall where it was unobserved by the fire watch and landed on cardboard and fabric items.”
The fire was not discovered for about half an hour and air flow into the area meant the fire was able to quickly develop into a serious incident.
In response to the report’s findings, bosses at Helix Roofing Contractors of Wallasey, Merseyside, claimed in 2018 the cause of the fire was not proven and said it was ‘unlikely’ welding was the reason.
The company said: "After nine months of investigation by six investigating teams, the cause of the fire is not certain, but is a hypothesis.
“The conclusion reached of the report alleges that the ‘most probable’ cause of the fire is embers and spatter produced by the welding process.
"Several references are made in the report to electrical arcing taking place at the most probable point of origin of the fire.
“This is apparently discounted as a cause of the fire, despite our understanding that not all the ‘wiring’ of the transformers was recovered so a fault or arc incident in that equipment can’t be ruled out."
Asked to comment on the issuing of the Notice of Contravention a spokesperson for Helix said, in a statement: "We can confirm that we have nothing further to add to our previous statement."
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