Ringwood-based Rocare Building Services faces fine after three-year-old girl hit by a falling roof tile at Moonfleet Manor Hotel in Weymouth

A RINGWOOD building firm is facing a hefty fine after a three-year-old girl was hit by a falling roof tile which fractured her skull.

She was walking away from the swimming pool with her dad at Moonfleet Manor Hotel in Weymouth when the tile smashed her on the head.

Rocare Building Services has been charged – along with Gloucestershire-based building consultants Quadra and the hotel owner’s Luxury Family Hotels – with breaching health and safety regulations in regard to the accident in June 2019.

All three appeared at Bournemouth Crown Court for sentencing where a judge heard that there were “failures by each defendant” during a refurbishment of the hotel.

Prosecutor Sam Jones told how the tiles had been stored on top of scaffolding with insufficient measures to ensure they did not fall.

He said the young girl, who was with her father: “Left the swimming pool and a slate fell from scaffolding, striking her head causing a very serious injury. It was a very distressing experience for her family. She had a fractured skull and there were fragments of slate in her head.”

Mr Jones said she suffered permanent scarring as a result but was lucky the slate had not penetrated her skull and caused brain damage, adding “there does not appear to be any long-term implications”.

He said Rocare was involved in the “construction phrase” and should have had barriers set up to “keep people away from the construction area”, but these had been “insufficient”.

Mr Jones said the company should also have had measures to segregate members of the public from the construction area and there should have been signs warning them about it.

But he said the barriers and signs were “simply not put in place the way they should have been”.

There had also been no “back guard” to hold the roof tiles in place safely on the scaffolding, Mr Jones said, instead an “ad hoc solution” had been used which was “far from what it should have been”.

He said Quadra, the principal designer, had had “two significant failures” of identifying safety risks. He said its role was to “identify the risk and do something about it” but there had been a “complete absence of that in this case”.

The prosecutor said the company had “no plans” to stop things falling and nothing to stop people going within the construction sites. As a result there was a “high likelihood of harm” and that they had “failed in their obligations”.

Luxury Family Hotels were said to have failed to have adequately protected guests and staff from risks caused by the ongoing construction. As the building work was behind screens, the hotel had taken the view that it “looked professional” and had claimed it could not have known the slates were on the scaffolding.

But Mr Jones said they should have been aware of the potential dangers to staff and guests once the building work started and taken appropriate action including changing the route to and from the swimming pool.

At the hearing Rocare apologised to the girl’s family, saying that the firm had been in business for more than 38 years and its health and safety record was “excellent”. But it added that the accident “should not have happened and to have got it wrong in this way is a deeply upsetting experience”.

It said it was sorry for her and her family’s distress and for “what they have gone through and continue to go through”.

The companies will learn their punishment at a hearing on 24th October.