Wetherspoons stairs death in Bournemouth came after other falls
The death of a man who suffered a fatal fall at a Wetherspoons came after similar accidents on the same staircase, an inquest has heard.
Philip Shaw tripped at the Christopher Creeke in Bournemouth on 23 February 2020 and later died in hospital.
Two other men were hurt after being found at the bottom of the same “steep and narrow” stairs the previous summer, Dorset Coroner’s Court was told.
The jury concluded that the death of the 47-year-old was an accident.
Mr Shaw, from Bradford, was in Bournemouth as part of a stag party that arrived at the pub in Holdenhurst Road at about 20:00 GMT.
CCTV showed Mr Shaw, who had seven or eight pints of beer during the evening, was walking towards the toilets in the basement of the venue at 01:17 when he fell, the jury was told.
He was found at the bottom of the 15-step staircase by staff a short time later and taken to Poole Hospital, where he died of multiple head injuries at 04:23.
The inquest heard that in June 2019 a different man was airlifted to hospital after losing his footing on the same flight of stairs.
The following month another man was found at the foot of the stairs and treated by paramedics.
Under questioning, the pub chain’s health and safety manager Paul Carrington agreed the stairs were “steep and narrow” compared to those found in more modern buildings.
He told jurors the pub contacted the Health and Safety Executive as a result of previous accidents in 2019 for advice, and changed the lighting and added coloured nosing to the top and bottom steps.
‘He was my world’
Mr Carrington said the stairs have been closed since the fatal accident and the pub has been operating without them in use.
He added that the pub would not have been constructed as it was now under current building regulations, but these cannot be applied retrospectively.
A council inspection later found “slight movement” in the eighth step – the location of Mr Shaw’s fall – but there were “no obvious defects”, the jury was told.
Speaking to the BBC after the inquest, Mr Shaw’s wife Lisa said: “He always said to me he’d make me smile and laugh every single day.
“I still think of his smile – he just wanted to make sure everyone he loved was happy. He was my world, he was my rock.”
