UK’s largest pub firm guilty of health and safety breach over student’s death

Olivia Burt, who died in 2018. Her parents say Stonegate Pub Company prolonged ‘heartbreak and pain’ by pleading not guilty. Photograph: Durham County Council/PA

The UK’s largest pub company has been found guilty of breaching health and safety law after the “senseless and avoidable” death of a first-year university student who was queuing to get into a busy venue.

Olivia Burt, a 20-year-old life sciences student at Durham University, died in February 2018 when a heavy decorative screen being used to manage the queue into the city centre’s Missoula bar collapsed and fell on her.