Coventry businessman fined £48,000 after nine workers found sleeping in fire-risk East Durham building
The owner of an empty office block were nine workers were found camping out has been fined £48,000 for fire safety breaches.
Tarlochan Singh, 48, was the director of 5th Capital Limited, the owner of Ridgemount House on Bede Way, Peterlee, when concerns were raised with County Durham and Darlington Fire and Rescue Service (CDDFRS) that people were sleeping inside the “derelict” building.
Brigade safety officers discovered nine people sleeping on the third floor when they made a late night visit to the premises in October 2022.
It emerged they had been working on another building in the area also owned by Singh, from Cryfield Grange Road, Coventry.
Officers found several other serious fire safety breaches which placed one or more people at risk of death or serious injury in the event of a fire.
These included a failure to make a fire risk assessment, a failure to ensure the premises had appropriate fire detectors and alarms, a failure to ensure emergency exits were kept clear, failure to provide adequate emergency lighting and a lack of sufficient fire doors.
He pleaded guilty to a total of eight charges, all relating to breaches of the Fire Safety Regulatory Reform Order 2005.
Prosecutor Rosalind Scott Bell told Durham Crown Court: “He knew the state of the building and knew the workers were being housed in it.
“He must have seen the risk but he chose to take it.”
Sentencing Singh on February 24, Judge Joanne Kidd ordered him to pay a £48,000 fine plus £45,711 in costs.
Judge Kidd said: “These premises were fundamentally derelict and nobody could have thought they were suitable for anyone to spend any period of time in them.
“If there had been a fire inside the building these nine men would have been very much at risk of not being able to get out of the building.”
Ben Cairns Director of Community Risk Management at CDDFRS welcomed the court’s sentence.
He said: “The breaches of fire safety legislation were so serious that there was an immediate risk to life and the officers immediately prohibited the use of the building.
“In this case there was a serious disregard for fire safety and the risk to life was so serious that it was in the public interest to pursue prosecution.”