‘Two companies have been fined a total of £1.5m following the death of a five-year-old girl in a disability lift.
Alexys Brown died in hospital after putting her head through a broken screen in the lift at her home in Weymouth on 13 August 2015.
Synergy Housing, her family’s landlord, was fined £1m and lift company Orona Ltd was fined £533,000.
Both firms pleaded guilty to breaching health and safety regulations by failing to maintain the lift properly.’ (BBC News)
‘The court heard the tragedy happened in August 2015 when Alexys’s older brother Jack, who has a degenerative neurological condition and is a wheelchair user, asked her to go upstairs to get his mobile phone. As she travelled upstairs on the platform lift, she was able to put her head through a hole in the door panel and she was trapped.’ (The Guardian)
Douglas James
