Firm fined after father is crushed by crane in Hampstead
A construction firm and its boss have been fined �178,500 after a 26-year-old builder was crushed under a crane on a Hampstead building site.
Craig Page died after the crane – carrying three times its maximum load – toppled over, smashing its boom into the father-of-one. The accident happened in March 2009 in Denning Road.
Mr Page, of Islington, left behind fianc�e Michelle O’Donoghue and four-year-old daughter Shannon.
On Monday, Harris-Calnan Construction Ltd and its director Neil Harris pleaded guilty to health and safety offences. The company was fined �80,000 for the breaches in regulation and ordered to pay �66,000 costs. Mr Harris was fined �7,500 and ordered to pay �25,000 costs.
Ms O’Donoghue had been expecting a prison sentence for Mr Harris and hoped he would be banned from running a company. She said: “I’m disgusted. To just get a fine of �150,000 for two charges is just insulting and heartbreaking. We have been waiting for years to see justice served and to get a result like this is a massive kick in the teeth.”
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The 31-year-old said she was still none the wiser as to how her partner came to be standing in front of the crane.
She added: “You can’t put a figure on a life and anyone will tell you that.
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“He was everything to me – my backbone, fianc�, best friend and soulmate rolled into one. He was my left arm and I’m lost without him.”
Ms O’Donoghue is considering appealing against the sentence.
Health and Safety Executive inspector Dominic Ellis said: “From the start of this project, the defendants failed to control even the most basic of risks on the construction site. These failings ultimately resulted in the tragic and entirely avoidable death of Mr Page.”
