THE firm of estate agents responsible for a house hunter falling 30 feet down a well in the garden of a home she had gone to see in Malmesbury has been fined £200,000.

Lucy Driver and her husband James had gone to an open house viewing at 76 The Triangle organised by agents Strakers on April 23 last year when the incident took place.

Appearing before Judge Simon Cooper at Swindon Magistrates' Court on Wednesday, Strakers (Holdings) Ltd pleaded guilty to a charge of breaching the Health and Safety at Work Act by failing to discharge a general health/safety duty to a person other than an employee.

As the company had pleaded guilty to the charge the bulk of the argument in court centred around the degree of blame that could be attached to Strakers for the incident and the degree of harm that could result from falling down the unguarded well.

Prosecuting on behalf of the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), Inspector Matt Tyler maintained that in both matters the degree was high.

He told the judge that Mr and Mrs Driver had been encouraged by the agent at the house to have a good look round.

The agent remained inside the house while the Drivers walked to the bottom of the garden.

Hoping to have a look over the garden fence to the neighbouring property Mrs Driver took one step off the garden path onto a piece of board which collapsed and she fell 30 feet down the well, Mr Tyler said.

She was totally submerged in water at the bottom of the well for a few moments before coming to the surface where she was able to stay afloat with the help of a hosepipe fed down to her by neighbours.

It was more than an hour before she was rescued from the well by the Fire Service.

An HSE investigation into the incident concluded that Strakers had failed to assess the risks to the public associated with the house viewing and that no health and safety management system had been in place.

Mr Tyler told the judge that three days before the open house event Strakers had been informed by an earlier prospective buyer of the existence of the well under the piece of board yet no action had been taken.

He added that the house was part of the estate of a woman who had died and there was therefore no-one who knew the property well to ask about possible risks.

Strakers, he said, had no systems in place for risk assessment in the case of properties that were part of a deceased person’s estate and serious risks such as asbestos or electrical safety could neither be identified nor controlled.

He said that when Strakers had been informed of the existence of the well, one of their employees, Tim Peters, had visited the house, looked at the wooden board and assumed that the well underneath would be covered by a metal grill.

Mr Peters did not lift the board to check for himself, Mr Tyler said.

Mr Tyler concluded that the culpability of Strakers for the incident was high because there were no health and safety procedures, written or otherwise, in place to ensure the safety of visiting members of the public.

Risks were, therefore, not adequately assessed and controlled.

He also concluded that the risk of harm was high because someone falling 30 feet down a well could reasonably be expected to sustain serious injury and even death.

Andrew McLaughlin, counsel representing Strakers, told the judge that the company was sorry Mrs Driver had fallen down the well and accepted that Mr Peter’s inspection on April 19 should have been more thorough than it was.

He maintained, however, that the company’s culpability for the incident was low.

He said that Strakers operated the process of assessment followed in every single case of a house sale. It may not have been written down but it was imbued in every estate agent and operated by all estate agents nationally.

No company of estate agents in the country had a written procedure, he added, nor was he aware of any having special rules in the case of a property being part of a deceased estate.

He maintained that Strakers was not in breach of any guidelines for estate agents nor were there any HSE recommendations particularly relating to a property being offered for sale.

On the risk of harm Mr McLaughlin said the risk was low because there were plenty of people at the property at the time of the incident and that neither lifelong disability nor death would not result from falling into water.

He added that Strakers had since engaged the services of a health and safety consultant and new systems had been put in place.

The company had never before breached health and safety regulations, he said, had agreed to pay compensation to Mrs Driver and had pleaded guilty at the first opportunity.

After retiring briefly to consider his judgement, Judge Cooper, said he found both Strakers’ culpability and the risk of harm to be high.

He said that after being informed of the existence of the well the company had failed to investigate. They had not raised the cover, shone a torch down the well nor dropped a pebble to find out how deep it was or if there was water at the bottom.

He concluded that the well presented a risk of serious injury or death.

“As a result of the breach a number of people were exposed to very significant harm,” he said.

He quoted extensively from Mrs Driver’s written personal statement in which she said that while she was falling down the well she screamed and she felt she was going to die.

She raised her arms above her to see if she could grab onto something and her hands and arms became cut and bruised.

She banged her head on the bricks and as a haemophiliac she worried that she would lose a lot of blood.

When in the water had she not been able to wrap the hose around her waist in her heavy wet clothing, which included Wellington boots, jeans, a jumper and a parker coat, she felt she might have drowned.

At hospital she was told that her body had suffered as if she had been in or near an explosion and that she had whole-body whiplash.

Since the incident she had suffered from panic attacks and been treated for Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, required medication and both her work and her family and social lives had suffered.

The judge said that he recognised Strakers as a worthy supplier of services to the public in this area over a long period of time and he had no wish to put the company in danger of going out of business.

Nor did be wish to damage the ability of Strakers to pay Mrs Driver’s civil claim.

However, the fine must be sufficient to have a real impact, he stressed.

He revealed that a statement of Strakers accounts showed an average annual turnover of £4 million and an average annual profit of £630,000.

He imposed a fine of £200,000, reduced from £300,000 in view of the company’s guilty plea, and ordered Strakers to pay HSE costs of £2,474.

At Mr McLaughlin’s request he gave the company two years to pay the fine in monthly instalments.

Following the conclusion of the proceedings Antony Bulley, managing director of Strakers, said: "The directors and staff of Strakers are deeply distressed by the incident which took place in April 2016 and Mrs Driver's well-being is of continued concern. 

"We wish to make it known that Strakers have carried out extensive internal investigations and have fully cooperated with the Health and Safety Executive throughout culminating in a plea of guilty at the earliest opportunity presented. 

"Our aim and wish is to ensure that everything possible is done to avoid any similar incident occurring in the future to any member of the public or our staff."