Bosley Mill trial: Owner handed suspended sentence and fined £12,000 after blast killed four workers
The owner of a mill in Cheshire where an explosion killed four workers has been handed a supspended jail sentence and been fined £12,000 after admitting a health and safety offence.
The blast at the wood mill in Bosley, Cheshire, on July 17 2015, killed cleaner Dorothy Bailey, 62, maintenance fitter Derek William Barks, known as Will, 51, mill worker Derek Moore, 62, and chargehand Jason Shingler, 38, whose body was never recovered.
Handing mill owner George Boden, 65, a nine-month prison sentence, suspended for 18 months, at Chester Crown Court on Friday, judge Mrs Justice May said he was a "totally inadequate managing director".
She said: "The task was simply beyond him, he should never have been health and safety director or managing director of a business which required a very much more knowledgeable and effective hand on the tiller."
Speaking outside court, Matthew Bailey, 44, whose mother Mrs Bailey died in the blast, said the fine was "nothing".
"He's not shown any remorse."
Boden, of Church Road, Stockport, had originally been charged with gross negligence manslaughter, but was acquitted of the charge in April halfway through a trial, after the judge ruled there was not enough evidence to prove that gross negligence caused the explosion, because so much of the site had been destroyed by the blast.
Following the ruling he pleaded guilty to being the director of a company which committed an offence under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974.
Wood Treatment Ltd (WTL) was fined £75,000 and Mrs Justice May said the company was "woefully wanting" in the discharge of its basic obligations.
Tony Badenoch QC, prosecuting, said the company cut costs at the expense of safety and there was a "continuing history" of smouldering fires and explosions at the site.
Photos and videos of the inside of the mill before the explosion showed wood dust piled up around machinery.
Mr Badenoch added: "In our submission, the company and the managing director ignored concerns that were raised by employees and third parties."
Simon Antrobus QC, defending Boden, said: "Just because he has always denied he was guilty of manslaughter it doesn't mean that what happened on that terrible day has not weighed on his shoulders heavily throughout the last six years."
He said Boden was dyslexic so struggled with paperwork and, although he was the health and safety director, the "real power" in the company lay with his younger brother Charles.
WTL had been charged with corporate manslaughter but those charges were also dropped halfway through the trial, which the court heard had prosecution costs of more than £540,000.
The firm admitted a health and safety charge last year.
Dominic Kay QC, defending WTL, said £2.5 million was spent after Boden and his brothers bought the business after it went into administration in 2008.
He said: "This wasn't a case of WTL doing nothing, it was trying to turn this company, which had failed and failed badly under the previous owners, turn it round, but it wasn't a quick exercise."
Boden was also disqualified from being a director for four years.