A union has welcomed the jailing of a builder who was found guilty of the manslaughter of two workers employed by his company.
Brian Dean was last week sentenced to 18 months in prison for the manslaughter of Michael Redgate and his 18-year-old son Carl.
The pair were killed in July 2000 while working for Dean's building and civil engineering company.
They were demolishing a tunnel kiln at Daniel Platt Ltd in Stoke on Trent when the kiln collapsed, burying them under tonnes of rubble.
Dean was also charged with failing to provide a safe system of work and instruction, training and supervision under the Health & Safety at Work Act.
Daniel Platt Ltd pleaded guilty to failing to appoint a planning supervisor and failing to ensure a health and safety plan had been prepared under the Const ruction (Design and Manag ement) Regulations [1994].
The company was fined £125,000, with £10,000 costs.
The Transport and General Workers Union said it regretted that fines had not forced bosses to provide safe working environments.
The union's national construction secretary Bob Blackman said: "It's the case that the only way to make directors accountable is by prison sentences for failures to adopt a safety regime."
Meanwhile, the Association of Local Authority Risk Managers (Alarm) said public sector risk managers should begin preparing for the possibility of corporate killing legislation.
Risk experts Adrian Bloor and Arthur Morris said they expected pressure from a number of action groups to force the government to introduce the long-awaited laws.
Bloor and Morris will speak at the Alarm conference in Manchester in July.
