London News Online reported on the case at Southwark Crown Court, which saw the company and Mr Patel prosecuted after London Fire Brigade (LFB) fire safety officers visited the tyre scrap yard premises. This came after police ‘raised concerns’ over ‘poor’ fire safety conditions, and inspecting officers found a ‘makeshift corridor’ constructed at the rear of the single storey industrial unit that had several rooms leading off, including a kitchen and bedrooms.

The bedrooms at the site in Croydon were being used as living accommodation for workers on site, and the premises were ‘heavily loaded’ with flammable items including tyres ‘stacked in excess of 4m high’, and as a result of this element of the inspection LFB handed the premises a prohibition order preventing it from ‘being used for sleeping or residential use’.

An emergency fire exit ‘was nailed shut and inaccessible due to piled up tyres’, and there was also no smoke detection found in the building, while the aforementioned corridor was built from plywood ‘and would have offered little protection against fire spreading through the premises’. The residential area also ‘had evidence of both cooking and smoking’, with ‘scorched and overloaded’ cables highlighting the ‘poor maintenance’ of electrics.

Finally, TC Ltd had no fire risk assessment for the site, and there was ‘no evidence that anyone working there had been trained in emergency procedures’. At court, the company and Mr Patel pleaded guilty to three separate charges related to breaches of the FSO, including having no fire risk assessment, a lack of general precautions and failure to install a fire alarm. TC Ltd was fined £60,000 plus £10,000 costs, and Mr Patel was given an eight month prison sentence suspended for two years.

Sentencing both, Judge Hehir described the premises as a ‘tinder box in the making’, while LFB assistant commissioner for fire safety Dan Daly commented: ‘Judge Hehir was right when he described TC Ltd as a “tinder box in the making” – it was just sheer luck there hadn’t been a fire there. As the director of the company, Mr Patel has had complete disregard for the safety of his staff, both while at work and in the living arrangements many of them were paying him for.

‘There is no excuse for leaving people’s safety to chance, especially when information is so readily available to those with responsibility for safety in buildings to understand what their duties are and ensure they comply with the law.’