Death-case jury told flooding of school-trip cave unforeseeable

Joe Lister, 14, drowned when a tunnel known as the "Crawl" in the Manchester Hole cave in the Yorkshire Dales flooded in November 2005.

North Yorkshire County Council, which owns and operates the Bewerley Park Centre near Pateley Bridge, from which the caving trip by 12 Tadcaster Grammar School pupils was run, denies two charges of failing to ensure the health and safety of the schoolchildren and its own employees.

The prosecution claim the risk assessment of the cave was inadequate and that water levels at the Scar House reservoir should have been checked before the trip was made.

Opening the defence case, Robert Smith, QC, told the jury at Leeds Crown Court the council took its duty of care seriously with 200,000 young people having enjoyed the experience at the centre since it opened.

He said Bewerley Park was a well run centre "with a close emphasis on safety, staffed by well-qualified teachers and instructors who were qualified in outdoor activities and who would never knowingly or even recklessly have placed a child or young person in their care at risk of serious injury, let alone death."

But he told the court: "We do not live in a risk-free environment and accidents can happen in the best run of establishments. One must be careful not to make a judgment which has the benefit of hindsight."

He said the duty on an employer focuses strongly on what is reasonable and what is reasonably foreseeable with the law requiring only a risk assessment that is "suitable" and "sufficient."

Mr Smith said the council was right to rely on the experience of the centre's staff as the local experts, rather than health and safety staff at council headquarters, to prepare a site specific assessment. They were the ones who took pupils out day-in, day-out and who had logged thousands of hours and thousands of visits to all the venues with which the centre was concerned.

The accumulated knowledge of the staff about the cave systems at Manchester Hole and Goyden Pot meant staff were well aware of the potential for wind-driven pulses of water blown through the spillways at the Scar House Dam under certain conditions.

They also knew how run-off from surrounding hills and valleys after rain could affect the River Nidd and did not need to visit the reservoir to see that.

"The issue in this case is not whether flooding of caves was 'reasonably foreseeable' but whether a sudden and rapid rise in water levels such as that which occurred in Manchester Hole on the afternoon in question was 'reasonably foreseeable'. It is the county council's defence that it was not.

"The conditions which occurred underground on the afternoon of 14 November 2005 were unprecedented."

He told the jury that was also the opinion of the Christopher Fox, the first to respond from the Cave Rescue organisation. His understanding and that of his caving colleagues was that when the Goyden Pot was "sumped out" there could be backing up in the Manchester Hole but "it would only do so slowly".

"It is the defence case that the rapid rise in water levels that afternoon could not have been foreseen by anybody.

"In all probability the rapid rise was due to sediment blockage and the rapid fall to sediment flushing." He said no one had been able to point to such a rapid rise and fall since.

Mr Smith said the county council had done all that was reasonably practicable.

The jury heard caving is still suspended at the centre so all lessons can be learned.

The trial continues.