Council did not manage guided busway risk, judge told
Cambridgeshire County Council has been prosecuted by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) after three people died and a teenager was seriously hurt on the busway during a six-year period.
The council has admitted breaching health and safety legislation.
A judge has been taking evidence at a sentencing hearing at Cambridge Crown Crown.
Jennifer Taylor, Steve Moir and Kathleen Pitts all died after collisions on the busway, serving Cambridge, Huntingdon and St Ives, between 2015 and 2021.
Barrister Pascal Bates, who is leading the HSE legal team, outlined evidence on Thursday as relatives of people who died watched from a public gallery.
He said guided busways were rare.
"This case is about the management of risk," Mr Bates told Judge Mark Bishop.
"The incidents in this case are related to incidents where that management did not work."
He said one charge related to crossing the busway and one charge to people being alongside.
Mr Bates said the case concerned the "mismanagement of safety" and added: "Central to the case was unpreparedness by the council."
He told the hearing the council had repeatedly refused to ask itself "relevant questions".
Mr Bates also said there had been "warnings" and told the judge: "It persisted, with inadequate justification, in not doing what it should have been doing all along."
He said buses running on the busway were "relatively silent".
"They are modern machines and they whisper along," Mr Bates added.
He told the hearing the "line speed", or maximum speed, for guided buses was 56mph (90km/h).
He said between 2011 and 2023 there had been three deaths and a number of "serious injuries" to "innocent" members of the public.
In 2011, a bus had made an emergency stop and a passenger had hit her head and fractured her skull.
Mr Bates said the incident had not been reported to the HSE.
Guided Busways
Guided busways are tracks which enable buses to travel at speed.
They have been built along former railway lines
The Cambridgeshire busway is one of the best-known in Britain - one also runs between Luton and Dunstable
On Monday 5 March 2007, then Transport Secretary Douglas Alexander opened a manufacturing plant at Longstanton, near Cambridge, which aimed to produce the 6,000 concrete beams for the guided bus route between St Ives and Cambridge
The Cambridgeshire busway required Government approval and the Cambridgeshire Guided Busway Order 2005 came into force on 11 January 2006
The hearing is due to end on Friday.
The judge was shown footage of two incidents. Both involved people trying to cross the busway. Mr Bates said one incident resulted in a woman's death and, in the second, a teenage boy was badly hurt.
Judge Bishop has indicated that he will announce decisions on sentencing at a later date.
A lawyer had said at an earlier hearing that a commercial organisation convicted of the same offences would expect a seven or eight-figure fine.
In September 2024, council chief executive Dr Stephen Moir apologised.
"We fully recognise and accept that during the historic operation of the guided busway, when these incidents occurred, that we fell far short of meeting these standards," he said in a statement released by the council.
"For that we are truly sorry."
In October at an earlier court hearing, the council admitted two breaches of the 1974 Health and Safety at Work Act.
The breaches were:
Failing to ensure members of the public were not "exposed to risks" when using "designated crossing points"
Failing to ensure members of the public were not "exposed to risks" when in the "vicinity of, or seeking to travel alongside" the busway
Barrister Ben Compton KC, who represented the council, had told the judge at an earlier hearing that the authority's "financial circumstances" would have to be considered before sentence was passed.
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