Trial over retirement complex blaze begins
Beechmere retirement village in Crewe, which housed about 150 residents, was destroyed by a fire on 8 August 2019.
The case relates to failings in the design, risk assessment, management and maintenance of the complex.
Cheshire Fire and Rescue Service initially pursued six firms, but has since ceased action against two of them.
No evidence was offered against WSP UK Limited according to a court representative, while the fire service said six charges against MAC Roofing Ltd were dismissed.
About 150 people lived at the retirement complex in Crewe [Cheshire Fire and Rescue Service]
The service said it was now pursuing a total of 14 charges against the remaining four companies – all of whom have pleaded not guilty.
They firms involved are:
Avantage (Cheshire) Ltd – a subsidiary of Your Housing Ltd which was contracted to procure the design, build and finance of Beechmere and operate the village.
Your Housing Ltd – employed staff at Beechmere and was responsible for fire safety measures at the site.
Morgan Sindall Property Services Ltd – the facilities management subcontractor to Avantage with responsibility for repairs and maintenance.
Total Fire Group Ltd – contracted to carry out fire risk assessments in August 2017 and August 2018 at Beechmere.
The trial at Chester Crown Court is expected to last between eight and 10 weeks.
Read more Cheshire stories from the BBC and follow BBC Stoke & Staffordshire on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.
Related internet links

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles

Associated Press
43 minutes ago
- Associated Press
A British aristocrat and her boyfriend are convicted of killing their newborn
LONDON (AP) — A British aristocrat who went on the run with her boyfriend and their newborn daughter in 2023 were convicted Monday of killing the infant. Constance Marten, 38, and Mark Gordon, 51, were found guilty of gross negligence manslaughter during their second trial at London's Central Criminal Court. They were previously convicted of perverting the course of justice, concealing the birth of a child and child cruelty during their first trial. Marten had secretly given birth to a girl named Victoria after the couple's other four children were taken by courts that found there was a risk of harm to them. Despite having wealthy parents with connections to the royal family and her own trust fund, Marten rejected her privilege. She lived at times without paying rent and while on the lam scavenged food from trash bins and camped in freezing conditions. Police launched a massive nationwide search that lasted seven weeks after a placenta was found Jan. 5, 2023, in the couple's burned-out and abandoned car in northwestern England. The couple spent hundreds of pounds on cabs to shuttle around the country as they avoided using credit cards or anything that might identify them. After their arrest in Brighton on Feb. 27, the couple refused to say where the baby was. Gordon, who served more than 20 years in a U.S. prison for rape, said 'What's the big deal?' when asked about the baby's welfare. Two days later, police found the baby's decomposed body in a shopping bag under rubbish in a garden shed. The infant either died from hypothermia or was suffocated, prosecutors said. The couple said it was tragic accident that occurred when Marten was sleeping. Both defendants testified during the second trial, but cut their testimony short during cross-examination. Marten called the prosecution 'heartless' and 'diabolical.'
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Prosecutor reflects on ‘long road' to justice for baby Victoria
A senior prosecutor has reflected on the 'long road' to justice for baby Victoria, saying nothing was too much for the child unable to 'stick up' for herself. On Monday, Victoria's parents, Constance Marten and Mark Gordon, were convicted of her manslaughter following two lengthy trials spanning two years. Samantha Yelland, senior Crown prosecutor for CPS London, told the PA news agency: 'I feel that justice has been done. 'It's been a long road, it's been a lot of work, but, you know, no work is too much when anyone's died, but particularly a young child who wasn't able to stick up for herself or fight for herself.' Last year, a jury failed to reach verdicts on whether the defendants were responsible to Victoria's death but did convict them of concealing her birth, child cruelty and perverting the course of justice by hiding her body in a shed. Ms Yelland sought a retrial on charges of manslaughter and causing or allowing Victoria's death in the public interest, even though it meant a second six-month trial. Explaining the decision, she said: 'A baby died in circumstances which she absolutely didn't need to and could have been avoided. 'That is why it's serious and it needs to be prosecuted. Obviously none of us expected it to take this long.' Dealing with a case involving the death of a baby is 'always upsetting' even for an experienced team, she said. Ms Yelland said: 'I consider it a privilege to prosecute baby cases. It is very upsetting, it could be harrowing, but usually the people charged with their killing is someone who is supposed to look after them. 'Some of the evidence in is not very nice, but we're just looking at the whole picture and wanting to get justice for the person who has died.' Images of Victoria's body found rotting amid rubbish in a Lidl bag in a shed near Brighton have stuck in her mind throughout the case. She said: 'I've seen what baby Victoria looks like inside of that bag. I've seen the post-mortem photos. 'We didn't subject the jury to that because that is not a nice thing to see. But the baby is in that bag, which we know she was carried around in when she died, but also when she was alive. It is probably what stays with me the most. And what was on top, the rubbish, the Coke can and the sandwich wrapper. 'And the two police officers finding it. You can see how moved they are when they realise that they found it. Obviously, that had been a manhunt been going on for a couple of days by that stage.' On the defendants' actions after four other children were taken into care, Ms Yelland said: 'We never said that they didn't love their children, but when it comes to decision making, it's the prosecution view that they think of themselves above the children. 'And that's why they got themselves into the predicament they did. And that's why Victoria died, and that's why they continued to keep her there in that bag for however long it was after she died and not go to the police and not explain the situation. 'And that's why I charged perverting the course of justice rather than preventing the lawful for burial, which is another offence I could have considered. 'For me, it was more than that because they kept it for such a long time that the state that she was in was such that we couldn't be sure if there had been an injury – not that we're saying there was for a minute – but we wouldn't have been able to tell because at the amount of time that she'd been in there. 'I do accept that there were experts that said that everyone grieves differently and everyone deals with things differently, but I think the whole theme of this case is that they think about themselves more than they think about their children and other people.' Ms Yelland said the case had presented multiple challenges for the prosecution before baby Victoria was found dead on March 1 2023. Discussions had already started about charging Gordon and Marten even in the absence of a body. The CPS pressed ahead with charges despite a post-mortem examination failing to ascertain exactly how Victoria died. With no pathological cause of death, the jury was asked to look at other evidence that Victoria died from hypothermia or smothering, as the defendants claimed. Ms Yelland said: 'We decided that although there were two distinct ways in which she may have died, our main case is that she died of hypothermia. 'The defendants raised that she was smothered and in response to that, we say, while we don't accept that, even if that were to be the case, the circumstances in which she was smothered are such it still amounts to grossly negligence manslaughter. 'It's our case that hypothermia would have been heavily involved in any smothering anyway, because she's been subjected to very cold conditions with the items that she was wearing and would not have been as healthy.' In a change from the original trial, an expert replicated cold and damp conditions in the tent where Victoria died and examined her inadequate clothes pointing to hypothermia being the likely cause. Other challenges involved piecing together and assessing sightings of the defendants from across England in the seven weeks they were on the run with baby Victoria. Mr Yelland said that the prosecution was able to narrow the timeline in the second trial although the prosecution still asserted Victoria survived for longer than the defendants had said. Towards the end of the retrial, Gordon, who by then was representing himself, provided the prosecution with the chance to lift the lid on his 1989 rape conviction in the United States after he gave a misleading impression of his childhood. When he refuted the convictions, the prosecution moved swiftly to produce an embossed certificate from a Florida court to prove it.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Cocaine courier jailed after road crime officers seize £1m haul from car boot
A driver found with 36 kilos of cocaine in the boot of his car after a 120mph police pursuit has been jailed for more than 12 years. West Midlands Police released dashcam and bodycam footage of David Sherratt, 48, being wrestled to the ground, after his Peugeot 3008 lost a tyre, and then telling officers: 'Good day at the office lads.' The footage also shows an officer deploying a stinger device and a colleague opening the car's boot to find two Sports Direct bags, each carrying 18kg of cocaine, with a estimated wholesale value of up to £1.3 million. In a statement on Monday, police said road crime team officers initially tried to pull over the Peugeot, which was believed to be linked to drugs, on the M5 in the West Midlands. Sherratt, of no fixed address, pulled towards the hard shoulder but then sped off on the southbound M5 before heading on to the M42, where the Peugeot lost a tyre and was boxed in near Alvechurch, Worcestershire. Police said Sherratt was seen smashing his phone against the dashboard, but messages were recovered showing he had been involved in the collection of a further 135kg of drugs, earning up to £200 per kilo delivered. He was sentenced at Birmingham Crown Court last Monday, police said, and was jailed for 12 years and nine months after admitting being concerned in the supply of cocaine, possessing the drug with intent to supply, and dangerous driving. Sherratt has 12 convictions for 19 offences dating back to 1995 and was jailed for six years in 2016 for conspiracy to supply class A drugs, and more than four years in 2020 for further drugs offences. Detective Chief Inspector Peter Cooke, of the Regional Organised Crime Unit for the West Midlands, said: 'This is a major recovery of drugs that would have ultimately been sold on the streets of the UK and caused untold misery. 'Sherratt's attempt to get away from our officers was dangerous and put other road-users at risk, but great work by the Road Crime Team meant the pursuit was brought to a safe conclusion. 'He played a significant role in the distribution of drugs around the country, but will now be spending years behind bars.' West Midlands Police said its Road Crime Team officers target criminals involved in car key burglaries and other serious and organised crime, using unmarked, high-performance cars as well as distinctive 'interceptor' vehicles. They support the work of Operation Target, an around the clock 'mission to disrupt and arrest those involved in guns, drugs, exploitation and more'.