Hotel owner sees £200k fine appeal dismissed

The hotel's owner was told to pay the £200,000 fine and £143,000 costs in October 2023

A hotel owner fined £200,000 after a three-year-old girl was seriously injured by a falling roof slate during building works has had an appeal dismissed.

LFH Moonfleet Manor Limited, which runs Weymouth's Moonfleet Manor Hotel, appealed at the High Court after it was fined and told to pay a further £143,000 in costs in October 2023.

The girl suffered a depressed skull fracture and was put into an induced coma after a 1.5kg slate fell two storeys from the hotel's roof in June 2019.

Three judges found earlier this month that the fine originally imposed was "proportionate" and that the company had failed to "heed the warnings of others" before the accident.

Rocare, the principal contractor, and Quadra, the principal designer of the project to replace the hotel's slate roof, were previously fined £160,000 and £60,000 respectively at Bournemouth Crown Court.

Work to replace the roof started in February 2019 and all three companies were at site meetings where health and safety issues were discussed.

In March 2019, hotel staff had needed to take "immediate action" to redirect guests to use a safer route when large scaffolding beams needed to be raised up to the hotel's roof level.

The High Court was told that the hotel's owner believed the sentence had been "disproportionately high" given its turnover.

But Lord Justice Jeremy Baker, Mrs Justice McGowan and Judge Tracey Lloyd-Clarke dismissed the appeal.