Man jailed after trench collapsed on labourer

A man has been jailed after a construction worker died when a trench collapsed on him in 2020.

Peter Clifford, 63, formerly of Holland Road, Felixstowe, Suffolk, appeared at Ipswich Crown Court after pleading guilty to gross negligence manslaughter.

Worker Dale Baker, 30, from Felixstowe, sustained serious injuries while carrying out renovation work on a Woodbridge house on 15 December 2020 and died at the scene.

Clifford was sentenced to eight years and 10 months imprisonment and banned from acting as a company director for the next 10 years.

Clifford also pleaded guilty to two counts of failing to discharge the employer's general duty under health and safety rules.

Clifford's company, Hintonwood East Anglia Ltd, admitted to the same charges related to health and safety rules.

According to police, Baker had been working as labourer with Clifford on a house renovation.

He was killed when the side of a trench, dug as part of the works, collapsed on him, followed by the foundations of the home's conservatory.

Investigations found that Clifford had either taken no steps, or took inadequate steps, in ensuring the trench would not collapse.

It was also found the trench had been dug dangerously close to the conservatory, "creating a risk of undermining it and that Clifford took no action to support its foundations", the police said.

A post-mortem found that Baker's cause of death had been suffocation.

In March last year a warrant for Clifford's arrest was issued after he failed to attend court.

By July of that year, he was found and arrested in Scotland before being transported back to Suffolk.

Supt Mike Brown, the senior investigating officer from Suffolk Police, said Baker's family had to wait almost six years for justice, "a process that Peter Clifford has deliberately impeded".

"Clifford could have admitted his obvious responsibility for Dale's death much earlier than he did," he said.

"It was clear that he had failed in his duty as an employer to ensure the safety of the construction site and implement basic measures that would've prohibited a tragic incident such as this to occur.

"To then compound matters by failing to appear at court and going on the run displayed a level of contempt for Dale's family and the judicial process."

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