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Chessington World of Adventures Resort

The simple principle is - if the child had climbed over the fence then in my view Chessington wouldn't be at fault. HOWEVER, in this case they fell through a gap in the fence, therefore Chessington are very much at fault.
 
Dave said:
The simple principle is - if the child had climbed over the fence then in my view Chessington wouldn't be at fault. HOWEVER, in this case they fell through a gap in the fence, therefore Chessington are very much at fault.
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I agree, no fault of the child if a gap had appeared in a childrens theme park on a raised platform.
 
Dave said:
The simple principle is - if the child had climbed over the fence then in my view Chessington wouldn't be at fault. HOWEVER, in this case they fell through a gap in the fence, therefore Chessington are very much at fault.
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And this is where they failed in duty of care. We can only hope that they have learnt and have made changes across the group to stop this happening again
 
Nobody is really saying its the girls fault, that would be plain wrong. But, the point is that nobody could have foreseen water from the roof dripping onto the fence, slowly causing it to rot. Prosecuting the park for not inspecting where water drips (which effectively is what it was) seems very excessive and H&S mad. Yes the park should be a safe place and the like, but it was simply a pure accident, neither party is at fault really.
 
BenBowser said:
nobody could have foreseen water from the roof dripping onto the fence, slowly causing it to rot.
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As you say slowly rot, now checking raised queueline fencing regularly is reasonable steps to ensure safety of guests. Its not a case of not forseeing the problem, more of inspections picking up the signs of rot and fixing it before it becomes a safety risk.
 
BenBowser said:
Nobody could have foreseen water from the roof dripping onto the fence, slowly causing it to rot. Prosecuting the park for not inspecting where water drips (which effectively is what it was) seems very excessive and H&S mad.
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Trust me it's expected that people should foresee these kinds of things, in fact teams are employed specifically to predict and prevent every single potential risk, in any kind of functional environment like a theme park. There are necessary risk assessments for even the most silly of scenarios. It should have been discovered much earlier during the very regular inspections that the fence was rotting, in fact I'd say a rotting fence/leaking roof would have been a more obvious flaw to be discovered. It probably wasn't highest priority to fix it and therefore the accident happened.

Following this was exaggerated H&S campaign that led to a few silly decisions being made. For example, rather than taking the proper steps to ensure elevated queuelines were properly maintained, they were just demolished and replaced with ground level switchbacks instead. (Runaway Train > Scorpion Express). Or unnecessarily over the top "LOOK AT ME I'M SAFE" metal bars being installed along every single section of queue (Tomb Blaster). Anyway the right steps were made in the 2+ years since this incident took place, this is an old case now.
 
BenBowser said:
Nobody is really saying its the girls fault, that would be plain wrong. But, the point is that nobody could have foreseen water from the roof dripping onto the fence, slowly causing it to rot. Prosecuting the park for not inspecting where water drips (which effectively is what it was) seems very excessive and H&S mad. Yes the park should be a safe place and the like, but it was simply a pure accident, neither party is at fault really.
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The point is they should have seen that the fence was rotting and done something about it. Something like that in what is meant to be a safe environment for children is totally their fault. Imagine if what happened to that girl happened to you when you were younger. Would you and your parents really think it's acceptable to have rotting fences on raised walkways that small children could fall though? "Oh never mind, it's no one fault that a serious brain injury has been suffered, move on!"

If you are going to have a fence then you have to make sure it is maintained to a safe standard. Chessington failed at this.

:)
 
The single most obvious point that people keep making is this.

RAISED walkway.

That's the kind of thing you make absolutely certain is in tip top condition!

This isn't Top Gear. It's a kids theme park.
 
allyallyally47 said:
Seems Chessington have been fined £150k after pleading guilty on Friday

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-30780504

Can't really decide if this feels like absolutely sod all, or more than I was expecting?
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Think they got off lightly, they'd not even preserved the wood?

I mean people do that in their back gardens, to not do that on a raised walkway to me just seems ridiculous.

Obviously don't know all the facts, but from those I have heard, is APPEARS to be incomprehensible to me they were that lax with people's safety.

It's one thing being "H&S" gone mad, it's another entirely when you can't hold onto a hand rail because it's rotten and FALLS APART.
 
I find it amazing too that the wood had not even been preserved. It really does show the mentality of the cheap and cheerful look.
 
TheMan said:
It's one thing being "H&S" gone mad, it's another entirely when you can't hold onto a hand rail because it's rotten and FALLS APART.
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My works Health and Safety adviser came into the office this afternoon. I started to as ask about his view on this. and I had not finished saying chessington when he started. "There is H&S breaches then there is safety railing so rotten, silly string would of been more affective" It then carried on with him talking as he normally does, including using our safety railing checking system as an example of what they should of done to stop this incident.
 
H&S is such a big thing now a days, companies have to take steps to stop accidents happening, and not reacting after an accident has happened. For example at work we do hourly checks for slip and trip issues in store (supermarket) so we can minimise the risk of people slipping over. And its the same with various other checks that happen across the store. And the same should and probably does happen at theme parks, but clearly something went wrong at Chessie, and they have had to pay the price. Could have been a lot worse if she had died.
 
People widely misunderstand and overuse the phrase "health and safety" and that includes those criticising what they think it is.
 
I don’t think people do misuse the words ‘health and safety’. I was going to explain my point, but I’m in a rush. I need to go to the shops and buy some health and safety for breakfast.
 
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I don't know whether this has been mentioned on here already but as part of Chessington's 'Year of the Penguins', in addition to the new Penguin enclosure and new Penguins of Madagascar LIVE: Operation Cheesy Dibbles show, there will be new Penguins of Madagascar themed rooms in the Safari Hotel and a newly themed ride based on the popular characters in the Theme Park where you can 'bounce high into the sky'.

penguin-rooms-adult.jpg
penguin-rooms-kids.jpg


Information on both additions can be found here: http://www.chessington.com/2015/penguins.aspx
 
Yep even Chessington don't like the new investments this year. Bar the new penguin enclosure which is great and it should have been like that 30 years ago.

What's possibly worse is a huge budget has been spent on the tweaked show, which really needed to go elsewhere.
 
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