Fireskills

A record fine has been handed to a care home owner who put residents at risk through fire safety breaches.

David Moseley and his firm DM Care were given a £35,000 fine after local fire services found several breaches of regulations following a fire last year.

The Ambassador Care Home in Lytham Road, South Shore, was found to have a Santa’s Grotto blocking an exit route by emergency services when the blaze started in January 2012, Blackpool Gazette reports.

Furthermore, no approved fire protection systems and alarms were in place, therefore leaving residents’ lives at risk.

While nobody was hurt in last year’s conflagration, 40 people in the care home had to be led to safety by firefighters during the incident.

In a court case held last month, DM Care was given a record fine for an incident such as this in Lancashire and the maximum that could have been imposed.

And speaking to the news provider following the sentencing, Paul Ratcliffe, protection support manager for Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service, said: “The sentencing of DM Care is the culmination of a fire safety inspection in the aftermath of a fire which disclosed significant breaches of fire safety regulations that the prosecuting magistrate said could so easily have resulted in the loss of life.

“The substantial total of fines with costs of £40,375 is the highest amount we have seen imposed in cases such as this in Lancashire.”

Furthermore, he added that he hoped the fine would be a powerful deterrent to those who do not impose fire safety on the premises they own and disobey the law.

A landlord of a block of flats in North Yorkshire has admitted a failure to take fire precautions at the premises following the death of two young jockeys at the site nearly four years ago.

Jan Wilson and Jamie Kyne died after becoming trapped in one of the upper floors of the Tannery in Malton, following a fire started by Peter Brown.

Mr Brown was jailed for the manslaughter of both youngsters and on Monday (April 22nd), landlord Alan Foster pleaded guilty to four fire safety charges.

These include failure to take reasonable fire precautions along with a failure to make a risk assessment between March and September 2009, the date when the fire broke out.

Communal areas in Houses of Multiple Occupancy (HMOs) are legislated under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, which states that there must be a Responsible Person in place to carry out fire risk assessments for these areas of the premises.

If the assessment is found to have been carried out to an insufficient extent, the Responsible Person can face an unlimited fine or a prison sentence of up to two years.

Mr Foster has been bailed until May 9th when he will be sentenced.