Parents want answers after son's construction site death

James Rourke's mother described him as "very kind, very caring and loving"

James Rourke was killed on a construction site just months after graduating from university, at a time when his employer was already under investigation over another death. As the company admits major health and safety failings for the second time, James's family question whether lessons were learned.

It was on a school trip to Iceland that James's passion for rocks was ignited, eventually leading to a masters degree in geology from the University of Birmingham.

After graduating in summer 2019, he found a job with a small, family-run firm named Materials Movement Limited (MML), based in Henlow, Bedfordshire.

"He wanted to get his hands dirty on doing soil sampling," his mother Clare, 54, says.

"He wanted to learn the basics from a good company and that was what he thought he was doing at the time, and we were excited for him because it was what he wanted to do."

James, from Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex, started as a probationary site engineer, sampling natural substances on sites where contamination was feared.

James graduated from university just a few months before his death

On Monday, 18 November 2019 he was sent to a construction site in Brampton, Cambridgeshire, run by one of the UK's largest housebuilders, Cala Homes.

That day - his first on the site - the unsupervised 22-year-old was hit and killed by an excavator whose driver had not seen him.

An inquest jury later found no banksman - trained to direct vehicles - was present, the excavator was parked in an "area of restricted movement" and it had "not been instructed to operate".

Clare says: "For somebody with no experience, someone who's young and keen, someone who's on probation, [James] should not have been put in that position by anybody.

"There should have been somebody there with him, checking what he was doing, checking where he was working, checking he was safe, and MML just failed completely in their duty of care for him.

"To let a probationer on a building site with no supervision to do work is an absolute accident waiting to happen."

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During a brief hearing at Peterborough Magistrates' Court on Friday, MML pleaded guilty to contravening a health and safety regulation.

The firm, whose director Philip Swain attended the hearing, is due to be sentenced on 22 March.

James was killed during the construction of this housing development, near Brampton Park Golf Club

Just two days before James's death, the family had celebrated his sister Katie's 21st birthday.

His father Andrew, 53, recalls: "It was an awful time for us just having to go through that experience and try and wonder what had happened.

"We didn't expect James to go to work on a Monday morning and then die."

Family members went to the MML offices to pick up James's belongings, where Andrew says they were told "that [MML had] never had anything like this happen to them".

"It's slightly galling that we have then subsequently learned from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) that MML actually was a company of interest and they had previously had a fatality for a lack of supervision that was being investigated at the time," he says.

Andrew, pictured with Clare, says the family have been living in a "blurry hell"

MML and another firm were fined just months after James's death for a case dating back to 2017 in which a worker, Stephen Hampton, died on a site in north London after an old fuel storage tank he was cutting up exploded.

In a media report of that case, a quote attributed to a HSE inspector says: "Neither company adequately assessed and controlled the risks of this highly dangerous work.

"It was left to the workers to devise their own methods of working, which was compounded by no site management."

It took more than four years for the HSE investigation into James's death to get to court, and his father says the family had to push for updates "otherwise it just goes into a bit of a black hole".

The HSE has since apologised to the family over "a number of instances where the family have had to wait longer than was reasonable to receive a response".

James's family question whether lessons were learned from the 2017 death

But Clare says those investigating the 2017 death "should have made sure that things were set up and changes had been made to prevent the same thing happening again in this very small company".

"Had, in fact, the first investigation been brought to its head much quicker... maybe things would have been changed and James wouldn't have died," she says.

"But it worries me that this has been four more years of this company operating and not being held to account again, and what else has happened in the last four years with their shabby health and safety record?"

The HSE declined to comment until after sentencing.

MML has not responded to the BBC's request for comment and neither has PJ Labour, the company that employed the excavator driver.

A Cala Homes spokesperson said: "The family and friends of James have experienced a devastating loss, and our thoughts and sincerest sympathies remain with them.

"We have assisted the Health and Safety Executive throughout its investigation. Health and safety is of paramount importance at every level in our business.

"It is incredibly upsetting for everyone at Cala that this tragedy happened on our site."

Asked what he would say to MML's directors, Andrew says: "I honestly think that I wouldn't necessarily want to sit in front of those people, given everything that I've heard and seen.

"I think the question I'd probably ask them is... how do they live with themselves, given their actions and what they did or didn't do?

"Do they understand the consequences of that and what it's meant for us as a family? How do they feel about that?"