Site where boy fatally fell in Glasgow ‘should have been checked for safety’

A senior official on a building site where a 10-year-old boy died after falling down a maintenance hole has acknowledged “we should have checked” it was safe, a fatal accident inquiry heard on Tuesday.

Shea Ryan died on 16 July 2020 when he climbed through an unsecured fence on a building site in Drumchapel, Glasgow, and fell 20ft down a shaft.

Stuart Laurence, the deputy site agent, said staff should have checked maintenance hole MH22 was safe when his firm became responsible for it at the start of July 2020.

MH22 was part of the Garscadden Burn Area (GBA) of the site which had been operated by a company called ABV until 3 July 2020, when RJ McLeod, which had been putting in drainage works at the rest of the site, took on responsibility for it.

A central question in the inquiry has been how Shea was able to access the unfinished maintenance hole in which he lost his life.

Laurence told the inquiry at Glasgow sheriff court the first time he saw MH22 was after the GBA takeover on 3 July: “I know it didn’t have a layer of engineering bricks on it so from that I know it wasn’t finished.”

Related: Glasgow building site where boy died ‘should have had more CCTV’

Laurence added it would have been “obvious at a glance” whether a maintenance hole was finished or unfinished.

The civil engineer explained an “unfinished” one would be covered by a concrete structure with a cast iron lid weighing approximately 80kg.

The lid, he said, would need “two guys” to carry it, but that “a grown person could maybe push it”.

Laurence added that he “wouldn’t think” that a 10-year-old child would be able to move it.

Asked about whether a risk assessment had been done on MH22 after the takeover, Laurence replied “There wasn’t a risk assessment for the maintenance hole because we didn’t build it.”

Pressed on whether there should have been one, he replied: “In hindsight, yes, there should have been.”

A risk assessment of 6 July relating to GBA did flag up a risk of injury to the public because of a maintenance hole, but Laurence said this did not relate to MH22, which he said did not form part of RJ McLeod’s works.

He said the only risk assessment on MH22 would have been to check the lid was secure.

Laurence said when he first saw it from 10 metres away he could see “industry-standard materials” had been used and his “understanding was the metal lid was heavy enough [that] it was secure”.

However, he said to his knowledge nobody had checked it was bolted down, and no formal risk assessment had been carried out or documented anywhere.

Laurence said: “If we took it over from another site we should have checked that it was complete, more formally than we did – or I did, anyway.”

Asked about whether the maintenance hole would have been opened at any point between 3 July and the accident, Laurence said RJ McLeod staff would have had no reason to open it, and that he was not aware of anyone having done so.

The inquiry also heard evidence from Robert Van Beek, the contracts manager with RJ McLeod at the time of the incident.

The inquiry heard there had been five reported instances of unauthorised access on GBA prior to the takeover, which were reported to the police, but that RJ McLeod had been unaware of these.

These saw fence panels damaged, young people climbing on site machinery and appearing to play with tools, and a security guard being attacked.

David Swanney, representing Shea’s mother, Joanne Ferguson, reminded Van Beek that RJ McLeod had implemented extra security measures after Shea’s death.

Swanney asked Van Beek: “If you were aware of the unauthorised access incidents between April and June 2020, you would have implemented those measures before you took over the site on 3 July?”

Van Beek, 62, replied that had they known about the incidents they would have put in “a more active form of security” including CCTV cameras and additional fencing, as the GBA would have been considered “high risk”.

The inquiry continues.