Firm fined a further £200,000 after Storm Doris death

A commercial management agency has been fined £200,000 at a disciplinary hearing after a woman was hit and killed by flying debris in Wolverhampton.

Cushman and Wakefield Debenham Tie Leung Ltd was fined £1.3m after Tahnie Martin, 29, was hit by a wooden panel torn from ‘rotten’ fixings on the roof of the Mander Centre during Storm Doris in February 2017.

It’s now been fined £200,000 by The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) for bringing the institute into disrepute and ordered to pay £10,000 of RICS costs.

The firm, which was the managing agent responsible for centre maintenance between 2011 and 2017, admitted breaches of health and safety laws at Wolverhampton Crown Court in 2019.

An inquest in 2019 found the roof of the building may not have been maintained for nearly two decades.

George Roberts, Head of UK & Ireland at Cushman and Wakefield told the BBC that: “We deeply regret the tragic circumstances that led to the death of Tahnie Martin, following which we made wide-ranging improvements to our procedures.

“We have also sought to ensure that we continue to learn lessons, and that those lessons are embedded in our organisation at all levels.”