The Lansdowne Place Hotel site in July 2018. Mr Tester fell from a building behind the main hotel. Image taken from Google Streetview

Two builders accused of manslaughter were told that working conditions were unsafe before a roofer’s fatal fall, a court has heard.

Graham Tester, 60, died after falling 18ft from the roof of a two-storey building where little or no safety measures were in place, according to a health and safety expert.

The fall happened as the Lansdowne Place Hotel was being converted into flats in July 2018.

John Spiller, 51, a director of Southern Asphalt, and Steve Wenham, 47, a director of Total Contractors, were subsequently charged with manslaughter and a string of health and safety offences.

Their trial began two weeks ago at Brighton Crown Court and this afternoon the jury retired to consider its verdict.

Summing up this morning, the judge Mr Justice Wall, also known as Sir Mark Wall, reminded them of the evidence of another worker on the site, Sean Baker.

He had told the jury about conversations with both Wenham and Spiller. He had said to Wenham: “It’s so unsafe. How can you allow people to go up a ladder like that?”

He also said: “I told Spiller I was not going to bump felt up on to the roof. I said it was unsafe. I can’t recall his reaction.”

Under cross-examination, Mr Baker said that he had not mentioned the conversations when police initially took a statement because he had been so emotional.

He added: “I saw Mr Tester on the ground, very badly hurt. I was in pieces. I felt some guilt because I thought I had let Mr Tester down to a certain extent.”

Another builder who had been working closely with Mr Tester, Gavin Hills, said that there had been no pulley system to get things on to the roof.

He said that he had been on the roof when he saw Mr Tester at the top of the ladder carrying the roll of felt and then the roll slipping from his grasp.

Mr Tester had fallen backwards and both he and the ladder fell.

When he looked down to the ground, Mr Tester was lying there and was obviously badly injured. He had no way of getting down, so he called an ambulance from the roof.

He eventually got down via an internal staircase that he said he hadn’t been aware he could access.

Mr Justice Wall also reminded the jury of the evidence of health and safety inspector Russell Beckett, who had visited the site soon after the accident.

He found there was no scaffolding on the building where Mr Tester and Mr Hills had been working and no guard edging on the roof and the ladder was not properly secured.

He said that there was no safe access or safe method of getting materials to the roof.

Spiller, of Fishersgate Close, Portslade, had sole control of the work that Mr Tester was doing, and Wenham, of Deans Road, Merstham, was responsible for the overall site.

Mr Beckett said that Spiller had sent employees to the site knowing that safety measures might not be in place and did not instruct them not to go up on the roof if they were not.

He said that he should have been aware of the risks when he got on to the site and stopped them.

Wenham had been organising scaffolding and, it’s alleged by Spiller, allowed work to start before it was put in place.

In his defence, Spiller had said that he had been taken up on to the roof by Wenham via the internal staircase before the job started and he was pretty sure that he had told Mr Tester and Mr Hills that they should use that route too.

He said that he had been pressured by Wenham to start work that Friday because a spell of hot and dry weather was due to end with a storm and the roof needed weatherproofing.

He said that Wenham had told him there would be guard rails around the roof – but admitted he hadn’t known if these were in place when he sent his employees to the site.

Wenham said that Spiller had known the scaffolding was going up very soon and that he knew the site was unsafe when he sent his employees there.

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