In 2018, seven-year-old Harvey Tyrell was electrocuted in a pub garden. In this article, I'll be speculating on what went wrong and how the electrician who installed the circuit was found by a jury to be not guilty of manslaughter by gross negligence.
What we have here is a tragic case of a child’s preventable death by electrocution and my commentary on what came out in court. I wasn't in the courtroom of course, so this article and any opinions I have on the matter are based on what the press have reported, and source material will be referenced throughout. I want to talk about what seems to have happened here without anyone thinking I’m trying to line my own pockets. Just how did an electrician be found not guilty of manslaughter by gross negligence after a child died from a circuit he installed?
This sad incident occurred on a warm September afternoon at The King Harold public house in Romford which has stood on the corner of Station Road and Arundel Road in Harold Wood for 150 years. In 2017, it saw a facelift and a rebrand simply as The Harold.
On the afternoon of Tuesday 11th September 2018, seven year-old Harvey and his parents visited the pub. Harvey was playing outside with a friend, and reports vary a bit here, but it seems Harvey was in contact with what has been described as a "posh" or "decorative" Class I light fitting of some kind, either standing on it, sitting on it or in some kind of physical touch contact with it depending on what you read, when he reached out and came into simultaneous contact with a metal railing physically grounded into earth.
This completed a circuit with current running from the supply transformer, through the supply cabling to the pub's distribution board, through the fuse, down the lighting wiring, through Harvey, into the metal railing and back through earth to the supply transformer. The fuse wouldn't have blown of course as the current was likely to have been at a value below its rating, it being there to protect the wiring from overload, not to protect a person in contact with live parts.
Tragically, horrifically, Harvey died at the scene in front of his parents and other patrons.
Two people ended up in legal hot water over this, the pub's landlord, one David Bearman, and his brother in-law Colin Naylor, a 73-year-old electrician supposedly with fifty years’ experience.
Image copyright Central News
Bearman was tried in 2020 and pleaded guilty to manslaughter by gross negligence, and indeed I'll have a closer look at his role. His sentencing was delayed pending Naylor's trial, however on 16th February 2021, Naylor was, perhaps surprisingly, cleared of the same charge. So, how is it that the landlord is guilty, and the electrician is acquitted?
Naylor is still to be sentenced under a health and safety offence, so may yet see a fine or up to two years' imprisonment for his part in this awful event.
On the face of it, The Harold pub looks like a decent place to down a pint, but in 2018 there were underlying electrical issues identified by Local Authority inspectors at least as far back as 2009. The landlord, Bearman, apparently bought the pub in 2010 and it seems although it underwent a facelift in 2017, the opportunity wasn't taken to fully modernise the electrical installation at that time.
Bearman has himself been described in news reports as being "an electrician", so what is he, a pub landlord or a jobbing sparky?
Maybe he had been an electrician before he bought a pub for his retirement ten years ago, I don't know, the reports don't go into his past, but what I do know for damn sure is that "Electrician" isn't a string someone can simply add to their bow. If your day job is something completely different, then how are you an electrician? It's like the gobshite plumbers and tilers I bump into who tell me "I'm an electrician too actually". No, you're not. Just because you outfit bathrooms and can get some new downlights to work doesn't mean you know how something is to be competently installed. You don't have the requisite knowledge or equipment to be able to properly test that that your alterations or additions aren't dangerous and you're likely not up to date with the requirements in force on the day.
Here's a classic example I ran into on an EICR recently; underfloor heating installed by a bathroom fitter who, no doubt, told the homeowner they would handle the electrical alterations as they outfitted the new bathroom.
The homeowner sees the accessories on the wall, and they work. Here's what I see, no means of isolation for the underfloor heating which spurs off the permanent supply to a shaver socket, so you have to turn off the light circuit at the breaker to isolate the heating. The circuit protective conductor has been cut off at both ends leaving the heat mat unearthed. The supply cable has been run improperly between the shaver point and the controller with it outside of one knockout box and not grommeted as it enters the other. The wiring has been improperly terminated with the heat-mat braiding that's supposed to be earthed straying close to live parts. What you can't see is that none of this is RCD protected which was a requirement when this work was performed in 2018. Does it work? Yes. Is it safe? No, not in the event of a fault. I don't want to stray too far off the main topic here, but it's important to illustrate the difference between how a conscientious electrician undertakes a job with safety in mind and how a non-electrician muddles through to get something merely working, and getting something working doesn't mean you can go about calling yourself an electrician. The issues I have with this installation are invisible until one pulls the thing apart to take a look or until something goes horribly wrong.
As someone who undertakes electrical work as their day job, I can tell you it keeps me fully occupied with keeping abreast of the changes, be they regulatory requirements, new technologies, expanding my understanding and so on. I couldn't do a completely different job and still expect to keep my head above water on the electrical industry. So, with all that in mind, Mr Bearman's claim of being an electrician is problematic as either he isn't qualified, equipped and up-to-date to call himself such making him, at best, an enthusiastic dabbler; someone who can perhaps get something working, although not necessarily by-the-book, or he somehow is fully bona fide as an electrician, in which case his actions in this incident are all the more unexplainable as he ought to have known better as we shall see.
It seems there were previous instances of electrical installation and maintenance at The Harold being undertaken in-house by Mr Bearman, although not always with success. Reports say he was sporting bruising at the time of this incident after being "blown across the cellar" by a wallop from the distribution board earlier that summer, so he can't have been exercising safe isolation with whatever he was meddling with that day.
The tenants of the flats above the pub also reported maintenance issues, nuisance tripping and near-miss events such as the overheating of accessories.
We also have a couple of interesting witness statements, one talking of how Bearman had been attempting to fix the exterior lighting two weeks earlier following some damage and cocking it up by drilling through the cable, and a description from the pub's manager on how extension leads spidered around the place and that the garden lights could only be controlled by the fuse and would sometimes spark when switched on.
Now, when they say "fuse", I don't know if that means throwing a breaker or physically shoving in a fuse; the latter would certainly result in visible sparking more than the former, but either way, it seems there was no localised control other than engaging the overcurrent device which... isn't how a competent electrician would install a circuit. With operation meant for daily use by ordinary persons, a proper means of switching should have been provided.
Despite claims of being an electrician, it would seem that as of 2018 the standard of electrical installation and maintenance was lacking both for the public house and the tenanted flats above it. Expert opinion at trial was damning with another electrician apparently telling the court it was "the most dangerous place he had visited in forty years".
I suspect no condition reporting had been undertaken anytime recently, one source stating Bearman had been ignoring warnings from various agencies on the hazardous state of the electrical installation for a decade, and perhaps the attitude of Bearman was one of 'make do and mend' and so long as electrical accessories were working, what did it matter if nobody had proven any of it was safe?
One thing Bearman did successfully manage to achieve electrically was the bypassing of his meter to steal over £22k worth of electricity.
Electrician or not, following the 2017 facelift Bearman employed his brother-in-law, Colin Naylor, himself an electrician of fifty years, to undertake various other works over the spring of 2018. Naylor charged £150/day for 380 hours of work which equates to 48 days based on office hours, so he must have been up to some significant alterations and additions; we're not talking about a few odd moves and changes here.
Now, I myself don't have fifty years’ experience, yet if I walk into a premises whose electrical installation is clearly creaky and improperly maintained, I'm not about to start adding to it. Regulation 132.16 requires me to ascertain that the existing installation will be fit for the altered circumstances, and while the wiring regulations are non-statutory, that's just common sense. If you start dicking with something that's obviously problematic before you begin, you're opening yourself up to all sorts of risk, from the customer blaming you for something subsequently not working right to finding yourself in court because someone is dead.
So, if red flags had been raised regarding the state of the electrical installation in prior years, and without any evidence of any recent inspection and testing, how did Naylor, an experienced electrician, not know the electrical installation was in poor condition over the weeks he worked there?
And here's where things contradict themselves. Naylor himself says he "raised his eyebrows" at the state of the distribution boards, yet he also said he "never saw any evidence of any faults" and that he "never saw any evidence of anything dangerous or badly done in that pub". We may also presume from this he saw no evidence of the meter being fiddled, and I'm making no suggestion he was aware of that crime.
We know Naylor had over two-months’ work at this commercial premises. We don't know the full extent of that work other than it involving new lighting in the ladies toilet, a new socket for a fruit machine, security lighting, bar lighting and, crucially, a new lighting circuit for the beer garden. If Naylor raised his eyebrows at the distribution board as he says, what was it in relation to if he didn't think it was outright dangerous? Was it perhaps ancient? Was its obsolescence the reason for his eyebrows resisting gravity? I don't know what DB was installed, so I can't say. What I do know is that most of us would figure that with ten-weeks work in the diary, it would be a good start by ensuring the source of the installation is sound as all the alterations and additions will be hanging off it.
Take earthing for example. I'm not familiar with the premises, but it's likely to have a supplier's earth, or if not, then a rod or ground stake of some kind. All the final circuits are supposed to be connected to that earth so that in the event of a fault, there is a low-impedance path for the current to flow down to get back to the supply transformer.
If someone were to, say, touch a faulty outside light, then the current will take the easy path through the circuit protective conductor and the building's earth rather than passing through the higher impedance offered by the body of the unfortunate who is in contact with the live part.
It's interesting then that reports suggest the pub’s earthing was defective at source, removing that low-impedance safety path. How was that not one of the first things Naylor checked? That is where a competent electrician is going to start; earthing and polarity, easy checks with the equipment we all carry before any major alterations begin.
If you have a site used by the general public, especially one with metal mains-voltage exterior electrics that will become weathered and may be vandalised, having no earthing means a shock event is an eventual certainty; not a case of if, but when.
Naylor's defence was that he only first-fixed the exterior lighting circuit and then left to start a new job. Construction work was ongoing, so the new exterior lighting circuit wasn't ready for commissioning.
He apparently dead-tested to prove continuity, and the lighting had been wired in SWA and "three-core" cable which could mean anything although my assumption is a three-wire flex coming from an SWA junction into each luminaire.
Naylor apparently told the court that testing and certification "was the responsibility of the pub manager or owner", presumably meaning it's up to the duty holder, in this case Bearman, to get someone qualified in to hook up his wiring, test it and certify it.
What may have perhaps happened is that that Bearman, who also claims to be an electrician in his own right remember, has undertaken the final connection himself, wiring it into the existing electrics or into a fuseway without verifying a working earth was present and likely without any RCD protection. Certainly, no other party has been hauled up into court, so if Naylor left the job unfinished, it seems Bearman took it upon himself to perform the connection afterwards as has hasn't passed the buck onto anyone else. Like the example I gave earlier, we now have something that works on the face of it, but which isn't safe under the surface.
Certainly, it's reported that white flex and insulating tape were used to make connections as found by inspectors after the fact in September and which Naylor states wasn't his work.
The omission of RCD protection is significant, and I'm assuming an RCD wasn't installed as had a working RCD been present then it would have saved Harvey's life. The job of an RCD in this case would have been for additional protection - a backup for the earthing which is the primary means of fault protection for this circuit. It's a belt and braces measure: to keep people safe, on new circuits you install earthing where Class I equipment is used and you fit an RCD as a backup. The job of the RCD is to protect against shock and it does that by cutting the power if an imbalance of up to 30mA is detected between line and neutral as that current must be leaking out of circuit and if it's leaking to earth through you, you'll want the plug pulled sharpish. The wiring regulations have been demanding RCDs more and more over the past thirty or so years, and when 17th Edition Amendment 3 was in force, as it would have been over the spring of 2018 moving into 18th Edition in July of that year, the regulations were specifying RCD protection on any new circuit Joe and Jasmine public were likely to be getting their hands on.
Naylor's defence seems to be that the quality of his work up to the point where he left the project was acceptable, indeed he's quoted as calling it "first class", and that the subsequent connection and the failure to spot that the installation wasn't adequately earthed at source wasn't his responsibility.
But, what about all the other work he did? The fruit machine socket, security lighting, bar lights and toilet lights. All of these alterations would have had to be undertaken to the standards in force at the time. Surely some or all of those jobs were completed and energised or was all Naylor's work first-fix only? Testing on any finished circuit should have set alarm bells ringing if the installation earthing was borked, however by his own admission, Naylor made the assumption the earthing was okay based only on a visual check.
I moaned about fly-by-night electrical inspectors in a previous video who offer cheap EICRs based on a visual once-over, a service I don't provide for this very reason. It can give you a false sense of security that all is well because it all looks alright, but as this event shows, something that looks okay and appears operational is not the same as something tested and proven to be safe.
Moving on to the exterior lights themselves, and they were apparently second hand having previously been fitted into Bearman's own garden. I've no detail on them other than they were "posh" and decorative. I can only find a couple of photos of the beer garden showing metal railings and Class I half-lantern wall lights, but reports talk of Harvey standing or sitting on the faulty light and it's certainly difficult to grip a half-lantern so I suspect there's something we're not seeing here that he was able to come into significant contact with.
Unless it's an integrated fitting, I would personally have converted these to SELV and run them off 12 or 24V. For decorative lighting, you can get enough lumens out of a 12V LED lamp and even if water gets into it, there's no tripping, no shock risk, no need to use armoured cable except to prevent vandalism and you're not stringing 230V around an outdoor public space.
The news reports suggest the IP rating of the fittings was compromised and water had got into them, something Naylor described as "bollocks" although I don't know how he can be that confident. I've seen, and made videos of, IP rated sealed floodlights that have taken on water within months of fitting, so it's not inconceivable that water couldn't get into a second-hand luminaire. It would certainly explain how Harvey was shocked; water getting between live parts and the metal casing would allow that casing to rise in potential to a dangerous level.
Any sparkies reading will have attended the tripping RCD call-out where the smoking gun is often the Class I appliance that uses water because odds-on there's moisture between live and earthed parts. The first thing I look for when called to an RCD trip is whether it's raining and if there are any outside lights getting a bit soggy inside.
Despite findings of "significant defects" in the exterior lights and how they were installed, Naylor's belief was that Harvey's death was more likely from the metal railings having become live by another supply resulting in his electrocution not when he took hold of the railing, but when he subsequently touched the earthed Class I garden light. While that could happen through the footing of the railing penetrating a buried cable or a damaged flex or extension lead being draped over it, it would be easy to prove what metalwork was sufficiently earthed - the lighting or the railing.
I think it's safe to assume the HSE found the live railing theory to be bollocks, to use Naylor's own parlance. If Naylor is claiming he wasn't responsible for the hook-up of the exterior lighting circuit, how can he know it was correctly connected and earthed and how can he suggest it's more likely down to power getting to the railing than power being delivered through the wiring? I think we can all see - metal railing in contact with earth: earthed. Metal light fitting on 230V wiring: live. It's going some to suggest things are base over apex.
In the end, Naylor's brief got him off the hook by telling the jury they couldn't find him guilty as they couldn't be sure that someone else had removed the earthing.
I presume he means whoever performed the final connection could have, at that time, disconnected or somehow compromised the earthing at source, accidentally through incompetence or purposefully to obtain an impedance reading, while failing to then adequately reconnect it. And I suppose he's right. If the landlord is known to be a fiddler, who’s to say what happened between the electrician leaving and the lights finally getting switched on? If there's no paper trail, nothing signing off the final connection, it becomes a simple point and blame game, and the landlord has put his already hands up to it.
Naylor could have got himself out of hot water had he any evidence of testing the work he undertook in the spring. Even if the garden lights weren't complete, had he certified the other circuits he altered, then that should have proven the installation was earthed at source at the time he was there. On the certificate, under Comments on Existing Installation, he could also have covered his arse by stating the installation shows evidence of ageing and improper modification and that a condition report and upgrading work have been strongly recommended to Bearman who is the duty holder.
There's nothing to suggest Naylor provided the court with any evidence of testing or certification, and that's why he found himself in the dock. Although he ducked the manslaughter charge, he's yet to be sentenced for a health and safety violation and that's because he has no defence under Regulation 29 of Electricity at Work Regulations which are statutory. If you can prove you took all reasonable steps and exercised all due diligence to avoid committing an offence, that's your literal get-out-of-jail card. Guilty until proven innocent m'lud.
That's how Regulation 29 gets you, and an electrician of fifty years should have known it. EAWR has been around in its current form since 1989 and is nothing new.
There are lessons to be learned from this tragedy for both electricians and non-electricians.
If, as a non-electrician, you want to dick around with your electrical installation, then it's on you. If you live alone and have no friends who visit, then you may accept the risk, but if others live with you or you're fiddling with things in a building others work in or otherwise frequent, then you're an asshole because you're putting those people in danger without apprising them of the risk. If something goes wrong, maybe you'll be contrite, maybe you'll plead guilty without a fight, maybe you'll accept your sentencing without argument, but maybe someone else will be dead or have life changing injuries. For the safety of yourself and others, exercise your due diligence as a duty holder by keeping your electrical installation maintained by competent persons. By undertaking his own shoddy modifications, Bearman was probably rendering his insurance void at best, putting the lives of his punters and tenants at direct risk at worst and it wasn't he who paid the ultimate price, it was an innocent child.
If you're an electrician undertaking work, the first thing you do is to check the basics such as earthing and polarity. If the site, like this, shows eyebrow-raising evidence of improper modification or poor maintenance, then you have three courses of action, the obvious two being to either convince the client to bring things up to standard or simply walking away from the job. The third option is to undertake your work if you can be damn sure the additions and alterations you intend to make can be done so to the standards in force on the day and that you're not making things any less safe. In that event, you make it clear on the paperwork exactly what has been done, how you've proven safe and compliant by testing and you note in the comments section your concerns regarding the condition of the wider installation and your recommendation of it being inspected, tested and upgraded as a matter of urgency.
If you're not going to finish a job, then you ought to cover your arse to date by arming yourself with test data and observations. In this case, Naylor knew he was leaving his work incomplete and should have protected himself not by issuing a certificate for unfinished work, but by having formally noted the state in which the job had been left instead of the verbal communication he claims to have made. If he could have showed investigators an email or any handover paperwork with a value for Zs at DB, notes on how the new cabling had been run and terminated, dead test results on the new circuit and something informing Bearman in writing that the circuit required connection and certification by a competent person and in compliance with 17th Edition Amendment 3 or 18th Edition, then he may never have stood in the dock. He might still have been done for ineffective sealing of the light fixtures if it could be proven water got into them through improper installation, but that would be less of a problem had he got proof the installation was correctly earthed at the time he was working there, that he'd left the job with the CPC continuity proven as intact and that he had advised Bearman in writing that RCD protection be installed before commissioning, either by saying that directly or by implying it by stating it needed to be connected in accordance with current regulations.
Surely Naylor was aware his brother-in-law thought of himself as being an electrician, whether he really was one or not, and he must have seen evidence of Bearman's previous maintenance and alteration efforts over the weeks he was on site. Significant dangerous defects were found by inspectors after the event and it's unreasonable to presume an experienced electrician was blind to all of them. By his own admission, he never raised any concerns with Bearman despite claiming the place was eyebrow raising. It could be argued he should have known Bearman would undertake the connection himself without regard for testing or compliance rather than him hiring in a professional to connect up and certify the work. Having handover paperwork with some black-and-white test data on it would have provided Naylor a defence under EAWR regulation 29.
Every now and again, we sparky's all get a job where someone else has performed the first-fix and then left, either because they fell out with the client, have gone bust or have otherwise moved on for whatever reason. It's not reasonable to expect to start from scratch, so occasionally you have to finish off a job someone else has started by performing the final hook-up and certification. Before you do that though, you want to perform your own inspection and testing on what's there and be explicit on the final certification that someone else undertook the first-fix work. That's not to say I'm prepared to come in and sign off some DIY'ers efforts; that's not going to happen, but if there's a site where a proper electrician has worked and subsequently had to abandon for a legitimate reason, then I would be prepared to take over. If there's an incident after the fact which relates to the first-fix, such as someone claiming damages for hitting a cable that was run out of zone and plastered over before I got there, then I want to ensure I'm covered by my paperwork being clear about what my role was on site and what was down to the previous electrician.
The hoops we jump through to follow the rules and red-tape can be cumbersome, but the reason this stuff exists is to provide an audit trail of who is responsible for what. Hopefully, you'll never need it, but if something dreadful happens on your watch, you'll be glad of the paperwork to back your corner. Omit it at your peril.
Had Naylor completed his paperwork in the way the job demands, he would have either found that the pub’s earthing was bad and required correction before any of his alterations could be signed off, making the whole installation safer through its repair, or he would have had proof it was intact at the time he was there making him less culpable for it being faulty by that September. His failings however extend to more than just the omission of any paperwork. He may not have been the one to connect and energise the circuit that killed Harvey, but he contributed to the catalogue of failings that brought about these consequences by not doing the job properly. As is often the case, it wasn’t any one single, simple error, omission or bad decision that led to this, but a chain of events and missed opportunities over a long period of time with the final act being the chance circumstance of Harvey taking a significant hold of a faulty light fitting at the same time as an earthed railing.
I'm not going to give an opinion on whether the jury was right or wrong in reaching a not-guilty verdict for Naylor but given the reporting I can say I understand why they didn't convict him on the manslaughter charge. It was Bearman who was the duty holder, who improperly connected and energised the circuit, who failed to ensure his premises was suitably maintained and electrically safe. Naylor played a significant part, failing as he did in his duty of care, and he’ll face the consequences of that under health & safety law.
We'll have to see what sentence each man gets in a couple of months. Let’s hope the sentencing reflects the gravity of their actions.
My condolences go to Harvey’s family. This should never have happened.
Update, 06/03/21
On the day this article and the video (below) were published, I was sent this link to the Romford Recorder website which I missed when searching for information on this case:
https://www.romfordrecorder.co.uk/news/electrician-says-should-have-tested-lights-7320916
This entry on their website provides significant further information including a picture of the consumer unit itself, a surprisingly more modern affair than I was expecting, apparently installed around 2014 without any RCD protection which is baffling.
Credit: Crown Prosecution Service (via Romford Recorder)
This brand is about as cheap as they come, not that I'm suggesting it's unfit for purpose, but it perhaps indicates installation on a budget. Certainly, the spider's nest of wiring doesn't look like the work of a professional electrician. We also have a picture of the garden where you can see a low wall, metal railing and silver bollard light. The reports talk of Harvey sitting on a low wall, so it seems likely these are the elements involved.
Credit: Crown Prosecution Service (via Romford Recorder)
We also have further interesting statements that came out in court such as Naylor claiming it was "not my problem" to test the lights once they were live and that it was the responsibility of the National Inspection Council (effectively NICEIC) to have undertaken testing organised by the pub's management.
That doesn't read right, so I assume what he's saying there is that Bearman should have got an accredited electrician in to undertake testing and commissioning, which is correct, as NICEIC don't themselves do this work.
Naylor admitted he should have checked the distribution board was earthed, but I think this passage says it all...
To simply trust that a critical safety feature is in place four years later on a site that is improperly maintained, hasn't been inspected anytime recently, is owned by a guy who seems to lack understanding of what he's meddling with and where it looks like it was installed shoddily in the first place is rather pushing it. It's like hiring a car to someone without it having an MOT or any servicing or maintenance for years and trusting the brakes will work in an emergency stop; it's a hell of a leap-of-faith to make when somebody else's life may be depending on it.
Further updates:
Sentencing was today (15/04/21) passed on Bearman and Naylor who each received prison terms of nine years and twelve months respectively. Considering his guilty plea and apparent remorse, Bearman's sentence was reduced by fifteen percent with nothing added for the theft of electricity. The reports suggest Bearman took the consequences of his actions pretty hard as he had been friends with Harvey's parents and knew the lad well. While that doesn't absolve him of any guilt for the cavalier attitude he had for the safety of his customers, staff and tenants, it does add to the overall human tragedy of all this. But, of the living, it's Harvey's parents we should reserve our sympathies for along with his baby brother who will grow up without ever knowing Harvey. As his father said in court, "The day Harvey died he woke up happy and beautiful. At the end of that day, he was dead. It was so sudden we didn’t get time to say final words, to say goodbye".
Bearman's a fool who, despite claims of being an electrican himself, was either ignorant of the dangers of his meddling or he just didn't care, however Bearman's job was that of pub landlord; it was Naylor who was brought in as an experienced electrician and who charged a rate befitting such for a number of weeks. Naylor should have recognised the basic dangers and regulatory non-compliances which he otherwise missed entirely or turned a blind eye to. As the supposed expert on site, I feel Naylor was just as guilty as Bearman and should have received no lesser a sentence. He did nothing to alert anyone to the risks present on site, he simply proceeded with his work, took the money and left people using the building to live in, work in and visit for leisure.
At least Bearman put his hands up at the beginning. Naylor seems to have denied culpability throughout and his defence barrister argued for a suspended sentence pending an appeal. It looks like Naylor is still fighting his corner which can only serve to drag things on for Harvey's parents. Frankly, twelve months isn't enough for the part he played it seems to me, and no doubt he'll be out in time to enjoy a comfortable Christmas... which Harvey's parents won't get.
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Naylor's appeal to have his sentence reduced was rejected on 9th June 2021. The following is from the Lancashire Telegraph website and describes Lord Justice Haddon-Cave's response to Naylor's defence that his sentence was "manifestly excessive for a 74-year-old with no previous convictions"...
Naylor's machinations in trying to reduce a sentence that was arguably already lenient considering the consequences of what can only be described in the best, most generous terms as his 'inaction' merely served to put Harvey's family through unnecessary anguish and to waste the court's time.
This article, prior to the later updates, is also available in video form, see dses.tv for supported video platforms.
The images used in this presentation are copyright of their respective owners.
Source links:
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/electrician-cleared-manslaughter-after-boy-23512140
https://www.romseyadvertiser.co.uk/news/national/19094770.electrician-cleared-killing-child-dodgy-pub-lights/
https://metro.co.uk/2021/02/17/electrician-cleared-of-killing-boy-electrocuted-by-pub-garden-lights-14095518/
https://www.echo-news.co.uk/news/19077287.harvey-tyrrell-death-colin-naylor-takes-stand-trial/
https://www.romfordrecorder.co.uk/news/crime/pub-owner-drilled-through-cables-court-told-7071842
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-55753100
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9171655/Essex-electrician-installed-pubs-garden-lights-caused-boys-fatal-shock-court-hears.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8130381/Pensioner-admits-killing-seven-year-old-boy-electrocuted-playing-pub-garden.html
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/landlord-joked-about-faulty-electrics-before-boy-was-electrocuted/ar-BB1d4TVA
https://www.romfordrecorder.co.uk/news/crime/men-sentenced-after-death-of-harold-wood-schoolboy-7900260
https://www.clactonandfrintongazette.co.uk/news/north_essex_news/19235645.harvey-tyrrell-pub-owner-jailed-manslaughter-seven-year-old/
https://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/news/national/19360228.electrician-jailed-boys-death-loses-appeal-bid-reduce-sentence/
Much of the content credited to sources such as The Romsey Advertiser come from the Press Association and can be found verbatim across multiple sources such as ITV News.