Berkeley Firm and Lindner Prater Fined £1.3m Over Fatal 300ft Window Fall

Two construction companies must pay a combined £1.3m in fines after a 130kg window fell 300ft from the 26th floor of a luxury London development and killed a coach driver walking below.

The window fell from the Corniche development on Albert Embankment at around 10.30am on 2 October 2018. Mick Ferris, 53, was returning from a break to his parked coach when the unit struck him. He died instantly.

St James Limited, part of the Berkeley Group, developed the Corniche and acted as both Principal Contractor and Principal Designer. Lindner Prater Limited, of Reigate, was the specialist engaged by St James to design the penthouse windows.

An early design change made the windows open outwards instead of inwards. That meant a detached window would fall onto a pedestrian area. The safety of each unit relied on a single restrictor held in by a single screw, and none of the fittings had been confirmed by their manufacturers as suitable for the bespoke curved penthouse windows.

The failure was not unforeseeable. In August 2017, more than a year before Ferris died, a window left open in windy conditions fell from the same penthouses during construction and nearly hit two workers. St James led an internal review into the near miss, but records obtained by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) showed key areas of concern were not followed up effectively.

Only after the fatal incident in 2018 were the windows redesigned to open inward, removing the risk to the public walking below the penthouses.

After a five-week trial, a jury at Inner London Crown Court found both companies guilty of safety offences. On Thursday, St James Limited, of Cobham, was fined £1m plus £125,000 costs. Lindner Prater Limited was fined £300,000 plus £125,000 costs.

HSE lead inspector Andrew Verrall-Withers condemned the companies' response to the risk. "Two companies – widely seen as leaders in their fields failed to respond to an obvious risk, and tragically this cost the life of a man simply going about his day," he said.

"Even after a window had fallen in 2017, luckily just missing workers below, sufficient attention was not given to assessing the risk of the windows detaching and falling if left open in windy conditions. Too much reliance was placed on adding a small sign to the windows, in effect hoping the residents would not forget to close windows."

Verrall-Withers drew a wider lesson for the industry from the case. "The construction industry should pay attention to this tragic case. Principal designers need to pay careful attention to clarifying exactly what services architects, designers, and consultants will provide, and then effectively monitor their performance to ensure related risks are identified and coordinate necessary improvements," he said.

He also described the scale of the investigation, which assessed the involvement of multiple companies, thousands of documents, and highly complex technical evidence before the wait for trial. "We are grateful for Mr Ferris' family's understanding throughout and hope this outcome brings them some closure," he said.

The verdict puts principal designers on notice that delegating specialist design work without verifying performance — particularly on bespoke facade elements — now carries demonstrated legal and financial consequences.