(Alliance News) - FTSE 100 energy company National Grid PLC on Tuesday has been fined GBP4 million for failings in its management of gas networks at high-rise buildings which potentially put hundreds of thousands of people at risk.
The firm was sentenced at Liverpool Crown Court on Tuesday after it admitted breaching the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 at an earlier hearing.
Nigel Lawrence, prosecuting, said the failings came to light when the Health and Safety Executive launched an investigation in 2017, following the Grenfell Tower disaster, and discovered records did not exist for gas networks associated with a large number of high-rise multi-occupancy buildings.
He said the networks, which included many buildings in London as well as properties in the North West and Yorkshire, had been managed by National Grid until 2016 when it was taken over by Cadent.
Sentencing National Grid, Judge Garrett Byrne said: "As a result of those deficiencies countless members of the public were, as the defendant admits, exposed to a risk of serious harm."
He said a quarter of the high-rise blocks under the defendant's control were missing from their records.
He added: "By the time the company divested responsibility for gas distribution the records were, as the prosecution puts it, in a complete mess.
"Having read all the evidence in this case this is a description with which I would have to agree."
The court heard the company failed to inspect and maintain pipework for 775 high-rise buildings, 766 of which had been missing from its database.
Lawrence said: "There were hundreds of thousands of people, over a very long period of time, potentially exposed to a material risk to their health and safety."
Lawrence said 112 of the networks associated with the buildings were found to be missing pipe isolation valves which can be used in emergencies to isolate gas supply to a building, and 115 leaks or corrosions were found in the gas pipes.
He told the court there were "serious and systemic failings" and said the firm had known about the problem for many years.
Lawrence said surveys had been carried out in 2014 and 2015 on 260 high-rise buildings which the company had records of, but no action was taken.
He said: "The reports were simply placed into a cardboard box. There were therefore 260 unprocessed surveys left in a cardboard box."
Lawrence said No 10 had been briefed on the case and it would be "considered and reported at quite a high level".
Simon Antrobus, defending, read a statement from National Grid's Chief Executive Officer Nicola Shaw, who was watching proceedings over videolink.
In the statement, she said: "I wish to apologise unreservedly for the company's failures that caused us to break the law. The failures in this case are unacceptable."
Antrobus told the court National Grid was "a good, responsible corporate employer".
He said: "In the four years that have followed, this company has put in place a series of measures that hopefully can reassure the court this will never occur and has a system in place that goes beyond just acceptable or compliant with the law but is at the very forefront of practice."
The company was also ordered to pay GBP91,805 in costs.
Shares in National Grid were up 0.7% at 854.00 pence on Tuesday in London afternoon.
By Eleanor Barlow, PA
source: PA
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