Council did not manage guided busway risk, judge told

A council prosecuted after accidents on a guided busway "mismanaged safety", a judge has been told.

Cambridgeshire County Council has been prosecuted by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) after three people died and a teenager was seriously hurt on the busway during a six-year period.

The council has admitted breaching health and safety legislation.

A judge has been taking evidence at a sentencing hearing at Cambridge Crown Court.

Jennifer Taylor, Steve Moir and Kathleen Pitts all died after collisions on the busway, serving Cambridge, Huntingdon and St Ives, between 2015 and 2021.

Barrister Pascal Bates, who is leading the HSE legal team, outlined evidence on Thursday as relatives of people who died watched from a public gallery.

He said guided busways were rare.

"This case is about the management of risk," Mr Bates told Judge Mark Bishop.

"The incidents in this case are related to incidents where that management did not work."

He said one charge related to crossing the busway and one charge to people being alongside.

Mr Bates said the case concerned the "mismanagement of safety" and added: "Central to the case was unpreparedness by the council."

He told the hearing the council had repeatedly refused to ask itself "relevant questions".

Mr Bates also said there had been "warnings" and told the judge: "It persisted, with inadequate justification, in not doing what it should have been doing all along."

He told the hearing the "line speed", or maximum speed, for guided buses was 56mph (90km/h).

He said between 2011 and 2023 there had been three deaths and a number of "serious injuries" to "innocent" members of the public.

In 2011, a bus had made an emergency stop and a passenger had hit her head and fractured her skull.

Mr Bates said the incident had not been reported to the HSE.

• Guided busways are tracks which enable buses to travel at speed.
• They have been built along former railway lines
• The Cambridgeshire busway is one of the best-known in Britain - one also runs between Luton and Dunstable
• On Monday 5 March 2007, then Transport Secretary Douglas Alexander opened a manufacturing plant at Longstanton, near Cambridge, which aimed to produce the 6,000 concrete beams for the guided bus route between St Ives and Cambridge
• The Cambridgeshire busway required Government approval and the Cambridgeshire Guided Busway Order 2005 came into force on 11 January 2006

The hearing is due to end on Friday.

The judge was shown footage of two incidents. Both involved people trying to cross the busway. Mr Bates said one incident resulted in a woman's death and, in the second, a teenage boy was badly hurt.

Mr Bates raised HSE criticisms relating to lighting, signs and foliage not being cut back - and said a risk assessment had not been done to the "requisite standard".

He said buses running on the busway were "relatively silent" and "whisper along".

Judge Bishop has indicated that he will announce decisions on sentencing at a later date.

A lawyer had said at an earlier hearing that a commercial organisation convicted of the same offences would expect a seven or eight-figure fine.

The hearing continues on Friday.

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