Scots farmer died after falling 20ft through milk shed roof while clearing leaves

A man who died after falling from a shed roof at a farm in Argyll could have survived had he used crawl boards, a judge has ruled.

William McLean was clearing away foliage from between asbestos sheets on the milking shed at Killellan Park Farm near Campbeltown in September 2022 when he placed his weight on a fragile area, causing the roof to give way.

“The distance between the roof of the shed and the concrete floor inside the shed is roughly 20 metres,” a fatal accident inquiry determined.

His son found him lying unconscious and bleeding heavily and raised the alarm.

Emergency services were called to the scene, and the 55-year-old was airlifted to the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow.

He was kept in hospital for over a week with multiple skull fractures and bleeding to his brain. After showing no sign of improvement, a decision was made to withdraw life support.

His cause of death was ruled as a traumatic brain injury sustained from the fall.

The fatal accident inquiry at Campbeltown Sheriff Court has ruled that the events leading to his death could have been prevented had two crawl boards been used on the roof.

Sheriff Euan Cameron also ruled that a safe system of work with adequate precautionary measures that would have minimised the risk of falling had not been implemented.

In a written judgment, he said: “Having considered the evidence I am satisfied on the balance of probabilities that the deceased deliberately or inadvertently placed his body weight directly onto a section of the fragile roof surface of the milking shed which was not supported by an underlying beam.

“The reasons for Mr McLean doing so are unknown but as a consequence of this action, the fragile roof surface gave way and he fell some distance onto the concrete floor of the shed.

“He sustained catastrophic head injuries which resulted in his death.”

“In all the circumstances, I consider that a reasonable precaution which Mr McLean could have taken would have been the use of two crawl boards to move over the surface of the roof.

“Such a precaution would not have been prohibitively expensive or time-consuming to implement and would have obviated the need for Mr McLean to ever put his body weight directly onto the fragile roof surface.

“In my judgment, this would have been a reasonable precaution for Mr McLean to take and there is a real and lively possibility that his accident might have been avoided had he done so.”

Sheriff Cameron expressed his condolences to the McLean family for their loss.

Following the publication of the determination, procurator fiscal Andy Shanks, who leads on fatalities investigations for the Crown Office, said: “We note and welcome the Sheriff’s determination.

“The procurator fiscal ensured that the full facts and circumstances of Mr McLean’s death were provided at the mandatory fatal accident inquiry.”

Correction: This article originally reported a distance of 65ft/20metres between the roof of the shed and the concrete floor as stated in the FAI report. The Crown Office has since said there was an error in the determination and this has been corrected to 20ft/6m