Police Scotland admits failings contributing to car crash death

Force fined £100,000 over incident in which woman lay undiscovered for three days after crash was reported

Police Scotland has been fined £100,000 after admitting that its failings “materially contributed” to the death of a woman who lay seriously injured next to her deceased boyfriend in their crashed car for three days after the incident was first reported to the police.

The force on Tuesday pleaded guilty to health and safety failings after the deaths of John Yuill, 28, and Lamara Bell, 25, who died after their car crashed off the M9 near Stirling in July 2015. The fine was handed down at the high court in Edinburgh.

Bell and her partner, both parents of young children, had been reported missing by friends after they were last seen in the early hours of Sunday 5 July. The couple, both from the Falkirk area, left the south shore of Loch Earn, Stirlingshire, after a weekend camping trip.

Despite a call being made to police by a local farmer later on the morning of the crash reporting that the couple’s blue Renault Clio had left the road at Bannockburn, the information was not recorded properly.

Police only responded three days later when another member of the public made a 999 call after spotting a blue object at the bottom of the motorway embankment.

The court heard that he saw the female passenger move her arms and moan “help me” and “get me out”. He tried to reassure her and told her he would contact the emergency services.

Bell was placed in a medically induced coma after suffering a head injury, broken bones and kidney damage as a result of dehydration, but died four days later in hospital.

At the high court in Edinburgh on Tuesday, the office of the chief constable of Police Scotland admitted Bell and Yuill remained “unaided and exposed to the elements” in the car for three days, and that the failings “materially contributed” to Bell’s death.

Pleading guilty to breaching the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, the force admitted that between 1 April 2013 and 1 March 2016 it failed to provide an “adequate and reliable call-handling system”, failed to ensure it was not vulnerable to “unacceptable risks caused by human error”, and failed to ensure that all relevant information reported by the public was recorded on its IT system.

As a result, on 5 July 2015 a police officer at the Bilston Glen call-handling centre failed to record the report from a farmer that a car was at the bottom of an embankment off the M9 near Stirling.

Although Sir Stephen House, who was chief constable at the time of the incident, apologised immediately, saying the force had “failed both families”, the catastrophic error highlighted serious concerns about systemic problems within Police Scotland, which was centralised into a single force in 2013 and had since had severe cuts in control room staff.

The court heard there was an ongoing recruitment crisis at Bilston Glen, with a significant number of staff vacancies, at the same time as concerns were being raised about increased volume of calls because of the closure of other centres. Serving police officers were recruited to work overtime as service advisers, including the call handler who took the original call about the M9 crash.

Before the incident, there was no recognised quality assurance in place to ensure a computerised record was created for every incident that needed to be passed to the area control room for further action.

House stepped down early as chief constable in August 2015 after facing growing calls to resign following a series of controversies under his leadership, including the death in police custody of Sheku Bayoh, and rows over his use of armed police patrols and stop and search powers.

Source: (The Guardian)