Bosses of a Leeds engineering firm are set to appear in the dock on Tuesday after being charged with Health & Safety Executive failings after a seven-year-old boy died falling into a pipe on a building site.
Conley Thompson died after slipping into a plastic pipe on a construction site in Bank End Road in Worsbrough in Barnsley, in July 2015. Howard Civil Engineering Ltd of Howard House in Seacroft in Leeds will appear for sentencing at Barnsley Magistrates' Court for breaching regulation 13(4)(b) of the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 and Section 3 (1) of the Health & Safety at Work etc Act 1974.
HSE has taken the lead from South Yorkshire Police into investigating his death. Builders found his body when they arrived for work at the site - which had no security guards for almost two weeks and where panels had been removed from the fence around it.
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At the time South Yorkshire Police said officers had checked the building site at night after Conley was reported missing on Sunday, but they found it to be locked with a large perimeter fence.
Det Chief Insp Dave Stopford, the senior investigating officer, said: "The results of the post mortem suggest that Conley had, by some means, entered a vertical pipe on a nearby construction site and was unable to get out. Conley’s weight caused him to fall further into the pipe and pushed his clothing up around his body restricting his breathing."
Neighbours said they had told police officers searching for Conley on Sunday night that the adventurous youngster had frequently played on the site, despite being warned not to.
His grandmother Deborah Fraser said the family were devastated by his death. She said: "You know it was raining, he slipped and went straight down. I hate to think about what his little mind was going through. We know that he's got through a small hole in the top of the construction site, and because it's been wet he's slid down and gone into a vertical pipe.
"As a person he was a lovely little lad, boisterous, got into anything and everything but his smile could light up a room."
Howard Civil Engineering Ltd has been contacted for comment.
