Neville Scattergood Wiki
Neville Scattergood Biography
Neville Scattergood, 58, suffered fatal cardiac arrest after being struck by a falling branch from an oak tree while on the Isabel Trail in Stafford in October 2019.
A court heard that the tree should have been inspected under the Staffordshire County Council’s own security measures.
But a ‘clerical error’ meant it was left off the authority’s inspection list for more than a decade.
This meant that inspectors detected no damage to the oak, despite at least 20 complaints from locals about dangerous trees along the route, the court heard.
The court also heard that if damage to the tree had been detected, simple pruning would have prevented it from falling.
Death
Now the council has accepted security breaches in connection with Mr Scattergood’s death and has been fined £ 300,000.
Council leader Alan White offered an ‘unreserved apology’ to the family of Mr. Scattergood, to whom he had once presented an award for his service to the community.
Neville Scattergood, 58, suffered fatal cardiac arrest after being struck by a falling branch from an oak tree while on the Isabel Trail in Stafford in October 2019.
The North Staffordshire Justice Center heard how Scattergood was walking his dog on the Isabel Trail in Stafford on October 3, 2019 when he was struck by a falling oak branch.
Scattergood, a caretaker who previously owned his own leather goods stall at a local market, suffered fatal cardiac arrest and died during the incident.
The court heard that while the authority had systems in place to ensure the safety of trees on public roads, the oak in question had been left off the inspection list due to “clerical error”.
proactive inspection
This meant that no proactive inspection had been conducted for at least a decade prior to the fatal accident.
READ RELATED: Diabetes diet: The surprising food you need ‘every day’ to lower high blood sugar levels
Chris Hopkins, who prosecuted the case for the Health and Safety Executive, told the court that this meant that previous damage to the tree, which made it more likely to fall, had not been detected.
Had this problem been detected, simply pruning the tree could have eliminated the risk of it falling over, he said.
The city council had received around two complaints a year related to trees on the Camino Isabel, which had been dealt with individually.
David Lewis, representing the county council, emphasized that the authority had not intentionally ignored certain trees to save money or for any other reason.
He said: ‘This council has systems to maintain the trees. More than 99 percent of its trees were covered by these systems.
“Due to a clerical error, less than one percent of the trees were not inspected.”
But District Judge Kevin Grego noted that the council had no mechanism to uncover this error, even though members of the public had previously raised concerns about the trees on Isabel Trail.
Judge Grego said: ‘There were approximately 20 reports from the public between 2009 and 2019 related to trees on the Isabel Trail.
“Some were complaints about maintenance and others about fallen trees.
Statement
An impact statement on the victim of Neville’s father-in-law, David Jenkinson, that the family would feel his loss for the rest of their lives.
In an investigation into his death in June this year, South Staffordshire coroner Andrew Haigh recorded an accidental death verdict.
Source: https://wikisoon.com/
