Two firms fined £1.5m over death of girl, five, trapped by lift in Dorset

Two companies have been fined a total of more than £1.5m after a five-year-old girl died when her head became trapped by a lift for her disabled brother at home.

Alexys Brown died from head and neck injuries when she became stuck between the lift and the ground-floor ceiling of her home in Weymouth in Dorset.

The housing association Synergy Housing, which owned the house where Alexys lived with her family, was fined £1m. The maintenance contractor Orona, which was responsible for servicing and maintaining the lift, was fined £533,000.

Passing sentence, the judge, Stephen Climie, listed a series of failings. He told Bournemouth crown court: “No one should ever lose sight of the fact that this was industrial machinery operating in a domestic setting with young children present, which should have resulted in the most careful assessment of safety measures and controls at all times.

“Each defendant has accepted responsibility through the basis of plea documents and has accepted that to some extent each is responsible for causing Alexys’s death. Between them I am satisfied that they were wholly responsible for her death and the desperate loss to her family.”

At a previous hearing both companies pleaded guilty to a charge under the Health and Safety at Work Act.

The court heard the tragedy happened in August 2015 when Alexys’s older brother Jack, who has a degenerative neurological condition and is a wheelchair user, asked her to go upstairs to get his mobile phone. As she travelled upstairs on the platform lift, she was able to put her head through a hole in the door panel and she was trapped.

The children’s grandmother, who was looking after them, heard the boy shouting and rushed to the scene. She tried to free her granddaughter but was unable to and called the emergency services. Firefighters had to cut her free because there was no emergency key or handle to manually free her, the court heard.

Speaking after the case, Alexys’s mother, Lorraine Brown, described her as “full of love and laughter”.

She said: “We’d like to thank the emergency services who did all they could to help our little girl. We are now looking forward and raising our children with memories, pictures and videos of their sister.

“Hold your children a little tighter, love your family a little harder because you never know when you might not be able to any more.”

The Health and Safety Executive inspector Leo Diez said: “This was a heartbreaking tragedy that should never have happened. These companies missed safety-critical aspects and these failures went unchecked. These companies failed Alexys Brown. They could have done more to keep her safe.”

Dominic Kay QC, representing Synergy Housing, said: “The upset, regret and remorse is felt at all levels. The whole purpose of these organisations is to assist people who need help and everyone is devastated by what happened.

“The CEO, finance director, housing director, operations director and head of health and safety are all here because they feel it is their duty to represent the company and hear what is said by the crown and Mrs Brown.

“They haven’t shrugged this off; valuable lessons have been learned to ensure nothing like this will happen again.”

James Ageros QC, for Orona, said: “Everyone at Orona expresses its sincere regret and condolences to the Brown family.”