Two firms fined £1.3m over London coach driver’s death
A window had fallen from the same penthouses in August 2017 and just missed two workers, but key concerns raised in the review that followed were not acted on effectively.
Two companies have been fined a combined £1.3 million after a window fell from the 26th floor of a luxury London development, killing a coach driver below, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) said.
Mick Ferris, a 53-year-old father and grandfather, had been on a break and was returning to the coach parked nearby when the window came away at the Corniche development on Albert Embankment on 2 October 2018.
The pane weighed 130kg and fell 300 feet to the ground. Ferris died instantly.
St James Limited, part of the Berkeley Group, was fined £1 million. The company developed the Corniche, a three-tower luxury scheme, and was also principal contractor and principal designer.
Lindner Prater Limited, the specialist company engaged by St James to design the penthouse windows, was fined £300,000.
Both were found guilty of contravening Section 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act etc. 1974 after a five-week trial. The fines were imposed at Inner London Crown Court on 24 September 2026, with each company also ordered to pay £125,000 in costs, £250,000 in total.
Early in the design process the windows had been changed from opening inwards to opening outwards, so a pane coming loose would fall on to a pedestrian area. The change was never effectively risk assessed.
The safety of the windows rested on a single restrictor held by a single screw, and none of the fittings had been confirmed by their manufacturers as suitable for the curved penthouse windows.
The 2018 death was the second time a window had come away from the penthouses. One left open in windy conditions fell during construction in August 2017, nearly hitting two workers. St James led an internal review, but records obtained by the HSE showed key areas of concern were not followed up effectively.
HSE lead inspector Andrew Verrall-Withers said: “Two companies – widely seen as leaders in their fields failed to respond to an obvious risk, and tragically this cost the life of a man simply going about his day.”
Too much reliance had been placed on a small sign on the windows, “in effect hoping the residents would not forget to close windows”, the inspector added. On both occasions the wind speeds were not unusually high.
Ferris’s wife, Rachel, described the death as “so sudden” and “out of the blue”.
“Mick was just minding his own business. One minute there, one minute gone,” Rachel said. “The fact this could have been prevented, I just can’t explain. If somebody had done something differently – anything – it would have changed our lives.”
Only after the 2018 death were the windows redesigned to open inwards, leaving the public walking below no longer at risk from an open window.