Why did they let my son fall to his demise in constructing web site manhole?

A heartbroken mother has demanded to know why her 10-year-old son was able to enter a building site and fall to his death down a manhole.

Shea Ryan died in July 2020 after climbing through an unsecured fence to the construction area in Glasgow’s Drumchapel and falling down an uncovered manhole shaft.

A fatal accident inquiry at the city’s Sheriff Court heard from his mother, Joanne Ferguson who claimed it had been ‘well known’ children had been able to venture onto the site.

She wanted to know why nothing had been done to stop them and wanted to know who had uncovered the manhole, when and why it had been left uncovered allowing her son to tumble down 20ft to his death.

Shea Ryan died in 2020 after falling down a manhole shaft in at a building site in Glasgow

Floral tributes were laid at the building site where Shea tragically lost his life

Her statement concluded: ‘We miss Shea every single day…My heart’s broken, and my life will never be the same again.’

Graeme Clark, joint managing director at RJ McLeod, the principal contractor for the flood alleviation project, told the inquiry he had ‘no idea’ how the boy had been able to get onto the site and access the manhole.

He said: ‘He shouldn’t have been able to get in to the site. I have no idea how he was able to get in. He shouldn’t have been able to get in.’

Mr Clark added that ‘as far as I was aware from the documents’ there had been a heavy cover over the shaft weighing around 78kg – or more than 12st – which would have been ‘difficult’ for a 10-year-old to lift.

But he agreed with Advocate Depute Nicola Gillespie that the cover ‘must have been moved somehow’ for Shea to be able to access it.

He added: ‘We had no knowledge of any child on that site up to the date of the incident itself.’

The witness said he first became aware of the incident at about 9am on the morning of July 17 when he got a call by the assistant site manger.

He immediately travelled to the location the first time and explained: ‘I was there to ensure I was giving support to people, because of the staff on site that day, and hopefully to gain knowledge of the sequence of events that led to the accident.’

He told the inquiry that while there, he walked around to inspect the fencing and the only damage he could see had been caused by emergency vehicles coming in that morning.

Security arrangements in place at the time of the incident including ‘industry-standard fencing’ around the area and CCTV at the site office.

He added that a health and safety officer with responsibility for a number of the company’s sites – it had 23 projects ongoing at the time – would also have visited once a week or so to carry out an inspection.

Mr Clark said these security measures would have been decided based on a risk assessment by senior site officials before work started in March 2020.

But he added a number of changes had been made since the tragedy with the installation of an extra layer of fencing close to the play park, CCTV on the perimeter fence and motion sensors among them.

He said manhole covers had also been secured with ballast bags while a formal process for recording damage to perimeter fencing identified during daily inspections was now in place too.

Ms Gillespie pointed out he had said he had not known how Shea got into the site adding: ‘But immediately you thought you’d put extra fencing in the area next to the play park?’

The witness responded that the company had been aware of the play park when the original security plan was drawn up, and the firm ‘had a contractual obligation from Glasgow City Council not to fence it off’.

When he was asked why, he replied: ‘You’ll have to ask Glasgow City Council.’

David Swanney, representing Shea’s mother, pressed Mr Clark on failings in the company’s risk assessment process, including the failure to record fence inspections in the period before her son’s deat

He put it to Mr Clark: ‘Do you, on behalf of your company, accept your failures led to the death of Shea Ryan?’

Mr Clark initially said ‘no’, but later clarified that the company did accept responsibility for his death in respects of failures in its risk assessment processes.

The firm was fined £860,000 in 2023 for failing to secure the construction site.

The Fatal Accident Inquiry into the tragedy continues and is expected to last until September 9.