Black day in court for camping retailer

Prosecutions and Claims |
08.11.2007

Unmanaged asbestos that contaminated goods sold to the public has led to a £150,000 fine for high street retailer Blacks.

Acting on an anonymous tip-off, inspectors from the London Borough of Kensington and Chelsea went to Blacks' Kensington High Street branch in May 2005. In a store room at the back of the basement retail space they found roof-level pipes with damaged asbestos lagging which was shedding asbestos dust onto boxes of shoes and items of outdoor clothing below. The officers served a Prohibition Notice on the whole store, allowing Blacks to reopen the ground floor only when they had proved there was no contamination above the basement.

"The basement area and the stockroom were contaminated and they had to destroy all the stock," environmental health officer Tim Davis told HSW, "and that area was closed for a fair few weeks."

Davis said that Blacks' owners Outdoor Group (which also owns the Millets chain) had spent £1 million in the previous 12 months on having all its branches surveyed for asbestos and that the assessors had registered the lagging in the stockroom and ordered the room to be sealed off. On later visits the surveyor found the room had been reopened.

Outdoor Group pleaded guilty to charges under Sections 2(1) and 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work, etc Act 1974 for failing to protect its employees and the public. "In the stockroom only the staff were exposed," said Davis, "but you and I were buying that stock. There's every chance that someone out there has taken home, or given as a present, contaminated stock."

Sentencing the company at Blackfriars Crown Court on 19 October, Judge Deva Pillay said it was obvious the stockroom had been reopened because of "financial considerations and operational difficulties" and that the offences were "serious and deliberate breaches" of Outdoor Group's duty of care. He fined the retailer £75,000 for each of the charges, plus £14,622 costs.