When the inquiry was set up in December 2020 by Cornwall Council and Corserv into the health and safety incident at the Grampound Road depot in 2016, it was hoped that the QC who was carrying out the investigation would report by the end of March 2021.
As of 8 July, the QC’s report has not been finalised, but he has submitted a draft report to Cornwall Council and Corserv. He has not sent me a copy of his draft report but he wrote to me advising me that he would be commenting on the evidence and assertions that I had made about Cormac’s conduct. I had accused Cormac of deliberately lying to the Health and Safety Executive in order to cover up the seriousness of the injury to Mr Richards, the Cormac employee involved in the incident. I produced compelling evidence to show why I had concluded that Cormac had lied. See various posts on my legacy website, including More Cormac untruths.
However, in Mr Adamson’s letter to me, he said that he did not accept that Cormac had deliberately lied. He said that he thought that I had gone “too far”. See Adamson letter.
It will be interesting to see how Mr Adamson’s final report explains, amongst other issues, why the following lies told by Cormac to the HSE are not deliberate lies:
1) RIDDOR report submitted 5 weeks after the original incident said that Mr Richards was “found by a work colleague who took him to hospital”. In fact, Mr Richards was taken to hospital by ambulance, which was witnessed by the Highways Manager who was at the scene. The Highways Manager's statement made about the incident included the following: "Around this time an ambulance arrived and two further paramedics continued to assess and treat Andrew. Andrew's wife arrived shortly after and she accompanied Andrew to hospital in the ambulance.” I contended that there was no feasible explanation other than Cormac deliberately lied about this aspect in the RIDDOR report.
2) Under RIDDOR reporting criteria, there are different categories of injury. A fracture (other than minor fractures to toes or fingers) is what is known as a reportable injury. Cormac put in the RIDDOR report that Mr Richards had an “over 7 day injury”. In August 2017, when Cormac produced an incident report prepared by the Health and Safety Manager of Cormac, it said in the report that "Subsequent enquiries reveal he had a fractured skull and a bleed on the brain, although this was not evident at the time when he was found.” A few weeks later, the same Health and Safety Manager of Cormac emailed the HSE and said that there was no change "to the category of injury”. In other words, it was still classified as an over 7 day injury even though the same Health and Safety Manager had just written a report that said that it was a fractured skull.
I feel that I am justified in saying that these were deliberate lies by Cormac. Mr Adamson seems to think that there is a more innocent explanation.
I have replied to Mr Adamson, see reply to Adamson.