Prince's Trust is fined over deaths

THE PRINCE'S TRUST, founded by the Prince of Wales to boost the self-esteem of unemployed young people, was fined pounds 10,000 yesterday for failing to ensure the safety of two volunteers killed when a sea wall collapsed on them in the Orkney islands.

Two other training bodies were also fined after Kirkwall Sheriff Court heard the story of a tragedy that might never have happened if any risk assessment of the work assigned to the volunteers had been carried out.

Derek Taylor, an unemployed 19-year old from Dundee, joined a 12-week Trust programme after seeing a newspaper advertisement promising an exciting course that would be fun, free and challenging.

Garry Leaburn, 25, also from Dundee and unemployed, was so taken by the experience he wrote a poem about it. "A better team couldn't be picked./ For any young folk it's a must, come and join the Prince's Trust."

However the two men andeight colleagues on Team 26 were allocated totally inappropriate work for volunteers. The court was told the team should have been helping to rebuild a dry-stone dyke but instead were engaged on a major engineering project.

The pair were working beneath ground level under the foundations of a sea wall on North Ronaldsay in August last year when it collapsed, burying them under a five-tonne concrete section.

Fiscal (prosecutor) Graeme Napier said: "Had safety been high on the agenda, it would have been obvious this project was well outside the competency of this group." A Heath and Safety Executive investigation concluded that the collapse was "entirely foreseeable".

The Prince's Trust Volunteers pleaded guilty to a charge under the Health and Safety at Work Act. Two other organisations, Adult Community Training (Dundee) Ltd and Angus College, Arbroath, also pleaded guilty to charges under the Act. All three admitted failing to ensure that Mr Leaburn and Mr Taylor were not exposed to safety risks.

Adult Community Training (ACT) ran the programme for the Trust while Angus College provided premises and a team leader.

Prince Charles visited North Ronaldsay after storms damaged the dyke that surrounds the island and keeps its unique seaweed-eating sheep on the shore. For the next four years, teams of Trust volunteers travelled to the island to help with repairs.

Mr Napier said Team 26 members believed they would be involved in dyke repairs, but they were put to work on repairs to a concrete wall built 10 years earlier when a section of the dyke collapsed.

The wall foundations were unsupported. At around 3.30pm on 6 August a section 20ft long, 5ft wide and 2ft thick in places, collapsed. The bodies of Mr Taylor and Mr Leaburn were recovered just after midnight.

"It was a massive piece of concrete foundation," Mr Napier said. "It is not surprising they did not survive."

At the time, Prince Charles was said to be "deeply saddened" by the deaths.

It was the first time the Trust had faced charges and the organisation pledged to do everything possible to ensure that nothing like the tragedy happened again.