Show society fined after exhibitor electrocuted at show
The organisers of a Herefordshire horse show have been fined £10,000 after an exhibitor was fatally electrocuted at the site in 2009.
Kington Show and Agricultural Society was also ordered to pay £15,523 in costs after admitting an offence under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 which resulted in a man’s death.
The case brought before Hereford Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday, 12 January, by Herefordshire Council’s environmental health team followed an investigation into an incident on 11 September, 2009.
Edward Mervyn Allen, from Gloucestershire, died at the showground site, at Ovals Farm near Kington, when a silo he was carrying on a truck came into contact with high voltage power lines.
Mark Balysz, for the council, told the court that the organisers of the show failed in their duty to provide Mr Allen, an exhibitor at the show, with a safe pitch and had not considered the risk posed by the overhead power lines that cross the showground site.
Mr Allen arrived at the showground and he was shown to his pitch where he started to raise the silo he had on the back of his lorry to a vertical position.
Electricity arced towards the silo and he was fatally electrocuted.
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Simon Morgan, representing the 120-year-old Kington Horse Show and Agricultural Society, said everyone involved with the show was devastated and expressed regret and remorse to Mr Allen’s family.
He said the show now employs a health and safety consultant and ensures nothing at all is parked underneath the cables.
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A self-confessed newshound, farmer’s daughter and journalist of many years' experience, Charlotte worked on regional papers before joining H&H in 2007. A regular rider, she visited Ireland in 2010 to investigate the fate of Irish horses through the recession, to much acclaim, and reported from the FEI General Assembly in Rio de Janeiro in 2011. She left Horse & Hound in March 2013.