Carbon monoxide kills pub landlord

Pub insurance holders have been experiencing some difficulties when a pub landlord died from carbon monoxide poisoning and another 474 were at risk.

Paul Lee was a landlord at one of the properties of a massive pub chain, Enterprise Inn Plc. He had turned on a gas fire in the living room of the Aintree Hotel, ten hours before falling asleep. A cleaner had found him unconscious. He had suffered a heart attack due to lack of oxygen and died the morning after.

Enterprise Inn plc, the owner of the hotel was prosecuted after an investigation by the health and safety executive (HSE) found that the fire is likely to have not been serviced since 1979 and the chimney was completely blocked.

Further inspections discovered that the pub chain, which owns 7,700 pubs across the UK, should have ensured that gas safety inspections were carried out at 868 of its pubs at least every 12 months, but only 394 had valid certificates.

At Liverpool Crown Court, the company admitted breaching section 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974. It was fined £300,000 and ordered to pay £19,000 in costs.

Iain Evans, the investigating inspector at HSE, said:

“It is shocking that a major pub chain failed to ensure regular gas safety checks were carried out at more than 400 of its properties. As a result, one man has been killed and hundreds of other lives have been put at risk.”

“Tests we carried out on the gas fire at the Aintree Hotel showed that the workplace limit for exposure to carbon monoxide would have been exceeded within five minutes of it being turned on, and would have reached a level known to be fatal within an hour.”

“The chimney from the fire was completely blocked so there was nowhere for the carbon monoxide to escape. Instead, it gradually built up in the room and starved Mr Lee's organs of oxygen until he was left unconscious.”

“What makes this case so tragic is that Mr Lee's life could have been saved if Enterprise Inns had continued to obey the written warning it received about gas safety six years earlier, instead of falling back into old habits.”

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