The Health and Safety Executive now faces a £600,000 bill after its case against a crane company accused of health and safety breaches collapsed

04:30, 06 Apr 2026Updated 06:58, 06 Apr 2026

Three men died after a crane collapsed in 2017(Image: Steve Allen)

An Oldham man’s lies led to the dramatic halting of a high-profile trial over the death of three people in a crane collapse, it has emerged.

High Court documents reveal Falcon Tower Crane Services were acquitted of health and safety offences in relation to the 2017 tragedy after Alan Ridgway ‘changed his evidence completely’ under cross-examination.

Rhys Barker, 18, David Newall, 36, and David Webb, 43, died after the incident at a building site in Crewe, Cheshire, on 21 June 2017. The three men were working as part of a team to erect the Potain MC85B crane on Dunwoody Way when it fell onto two homes next to the site.

In October last year, a coroner concluded their deaths were an accident and the collapse was caused by a ‘series of errors’ made by Falcon employees when erecting the crane.

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The Health and Safety Executive now faces a near £600,000 bill after the High Court dismissed its attempt to challenge costs it was ordered to pay due to its ‘improper conduct’ in bringing the ‘highly flawed’ case against Falcon to court in 2024. That case, the Appeal Court heard, hinged on the allegation Falcon had not appointed a so-called appointed person (AP), in line with industry standards, to oversee the method statement for the erection of the crane.

A ‘disastrous error’ in the method statement was not spotted, the HSE alleged, because there was no AP to do so. In its defence Falcon said its site inspector Mr Ridgway was the AP for the Crewe job.

But in both police interview and a written statement to the court Mr Ridgway, who appeared as the HSE’s main witness, claimed he wasn’t. However, under cross-examination at Chester Crown Court, he ‘changed his evidence completely’ and accepted he was the AP, the Appeal Court heard.

Police at the scene(Image: PA)

Following his admission the HSE offered no further evidence and Judge Steven Everett directed the jury to return not guilty verdicts. The judge then ordered the HSE to pay Falcon £587,000 in costs after ruling there had been ‘unnecessary acts or omissions… which constituted improper conduct’ in the prosecution case.

A ‘cursory reading’ of Mr Ridgway’s contract – which outlined that one of his primary responsibilities was ‘to compile method statements and act as appointed person for Falcon Tower Crane Services Ltd’ – would have shown he was an AP, Judge Everett said. Meanwhile a witness also described how Mr Ridgway visited the Dunwoody Way site on June, 2017 and had introduced himself as the AP.

The HSE, Judge Everett ruled, also failed to obtain evidence that showed Mr Ridgway’s role as site inspector went ‘hand-in-hand’ with his role as AP and that he had carried out ’90 different procedures in a two year period to erect cranes, clearly as an AP’.

“The reviewing lawyer in the HSE had a wealth of information which clearly showed that Mr Ridgway was not telling the truth in his police interviews, and which showed that Falcon’s system was perfectly satisfactory,” Judge Everett wrote.

Ruling the HSE had made a ‘series of stark and clear errors’, Mr Everett described the prosecution as ‘wholly flawed’ adding: “Any reasonable prosecutor should have realised that the evidence pointed away from Falcon and not towards it, when considering who, if anyone, was at fault during the events leading up to the tragic loss of life of three men.”