London care home death: Bupa must pay record £1.04m over fire failings

Private healthcare provider Bupa must pay a record £1.04m after admitting failings when one of its care home residents in south London burned alive.

Wheelchair-bound Cedric Skyers, 69, died when his cigarette set his clothes on fire in a garden shelter at Bupa Manley Court, Brockley, in March 2016.

Mr Skyers' clothes had become flammable from his emollient creams.

London Fire Brigade prosecuted Bupa and said it was the "highest ever fine for fire safety breaches in the UK".

Bupa pleaded guilty to fire safety breaches and accepted that staff had failed to understand the risks of Mr Skyers' creams, the service added.

Bupa Care Services (ANS) Ltd was fined £937,500 for fire safety failings and ordered to pay £104,000 prosecution costs at Southwark Crown Court on Wednesday, the fire service said.

Mr Skyers was unsupervised when a care assistant saw the fire from a first-floor window and called 999 before staff attempted to put the fire out, the service added. However, Mr Skyers died from his injuries.

Investigators found a smoking risk assessment had been carried out for Mr Skyers, but it did not assess his use of emollient creams.

The products contain paraffin and can be flammable if allowed to build up on skin, clothing or bedding.

Additionally, apparent burn marks indicative of previous incidents were found on Mr Skyers' clothing after his death, something which care home staff said they had not been aware of.

They said that if they had been, they would have ensured more regular checks were made when he was smoking.

London Fire Brigade brought the case as there had been a failure on Bupa's part to comply with fire safety duties, which placed Mr Skyers and other residents at risk of death or serious injury in case of fire.

Assistant Commissioner Paul Jennings described the case as "absolutely tragic".

He said: "There are a number of measures which the home could have put in place to mitigate the fire risk which Mr Skyers' limited mobility, emollient cream use and smoking posed - but none of these were implemented.

"Mr Skyers' family should rightly have been able to trust that he would be safe in a care home, when sadly the opposite was true.

"Such a large fine highlights the seriousness of Bupa's failure to protect a vulnerable resident in its care."

After the sentencing, the care home's Donald Day said staff had taken immediate action across all care homes to prevent deaths like Mr Skyers' from happening again.