Chessington World of Adventures has been sentenced for safety failings after a four-year-old girl was left suffering life-changing head injuries after falling from a raised walkway whilst she queued for a ride.
The young girl, from Kent, fell almost four metres whilst she waited to go on the Tomb Blaster ride at the theme park with her family in June 2012. As a result of the incident she suffered a fractured skull, bleeding to the brain and broken ribs and needed to stay in hospital for a month. Even now she requires extensive rehabilitation treatment and specialist support.
An investigation into the incident, launched by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) found the site’s fence palings had evidence of white and brown rot and on the morning of the incident one of the rotting paling’s had fallen out, having been dislodged. The girl had fallen through the gap.
The hearing took place Guildford Crown Court on 9th January this year and heard how, despite the theme park attracting tens of thousands of visitors each year it had neither an adequate system of checking and inspecting fencing at the site nor a maintenance process to ensure that any faults were identified and rectified. HSE told the court that had these systems been in place, problems such as the rotting fencing could have been identified and the incident avoided.
The theme park was fined £150,000 for the incident and told to pay £21,614 in costs after it pleaded guilty to breaching the Health and Safety at Work Act. Speaking after the sentencing had taken place, investigating HSE inspector Karen Morris said: “This was a disastrous and horrifying incident for the child and her parents. They had travelled from their home in Kent for a fun day out together at this well-known attraction only to find themselves hours later in an intensive care ward with their daughter.
“Quite simply, Chessington had insufficient measures in place to prevent or control the risk of falling from the raised walkway in the first place – and this was not just a couple of feet from the ground but nearly four metres.
“This incident shows the importance of implementing robust systems for checking and maintaining all aspects of rides, and this includes the walkways and fencing associated with queuing and where people gather.”