Developer Fined £1 Million After Falling Window Kills Coach Driver

A property developer has been fined £1m after a window fell from a luxury riverside penthouse in south London and killed a coach driver.

Mick Ferris, 53, was crushed when the pane of glass weighing 130kg (20 stones) fell 26 storeys from The Corniche in Vauxhall on October 2, 2018.

His wife, Rachel Ferris, told the sentencing hearing at Inner London Crown Court that her husband's death "could have been prevented," noting that a window had fallen from the same development in August 2017, but the design was not substantially changed.

Specialist façade contractor Lindner Prater was also fined £300,000, after it and developer St James Group Ltd were found guilty of ignoring "foreseeable risks." Luxury architecture firm Foster + Partners and engineering consultants Wintech Ltd were cleared of the same charge.

Judge Boyle stated that St James should have been more "robust" in "ensuring the critical safety component" of the window was "present and engaged." He added that Lindner Prater "should have done more to complete and document the risk assessment process."

In addition to the fines, St James and Lindner Prater were ordered to pay costs of £125,000 each.

Rachel Ferris described her husband's death as "so sudden" and "out of the blue." She stated that if "somebody had done something differently – anything – it would have changed our lives. We wouldn't be in this position." She added, "What those companies did killed my husband. The thought this could have happened to anybody is always with me. It could have been a child."

She told the court that 400 people attended her husband's funeral, and that "he is missed by so many it was unbelievable."

HSE principal inspector James Goldfinch commented, "The fact lessons had not been learnt from a near miss the year before makes what happened on that day all the more galling. For a window to fall once was quite extraordinary, for it to fall again was simply criminal."