A COUNCIL architect was responsible for causing Britain’s biggest outbreak of legionnaires’ disease which killed seven and infected 172 others, Preston Crown Court was told yesterday.

Gillian Beckingham, 47, a middle-ranking executive for Barrow-in-Furness council, cancelled a maintenance contract governing the air-conditioning system of Forum 28, the town’s main arts centre.

Several months later she negotiated a new contract, but it failed to provide for water treatment of the roof-top cooling towers, thus creating perfect breeding conditions for the deadly bacteria which is a form of pneumonia.

Over a period of weeks in July and August 2002, the ageing system sprayed contaminated water droplets down on to shoppers using an alley between the bus station and market and, according to the prevailing winds, across the town.

Alistair Webster, QC, for the prosecution, told the court that the strain, widely known as Benidorm, where it was first found, led to a “human disaster”. Up to 500 people were treated in hospitals for acute respiratory infection; of these 179, including the seven who died, were confirmed cases of legionnaires’ disease. At the start of the outbreak it was feared that up to 150 people might die.

Many victims had used the alley in the two-week incubation period but others had not even left their homes. Elizabeth Dixon, 80, who died on August 18, 2002, was largely housebound and Richard Macaulay, 88, the first to die, is believed to have breathed in the droplets when a friend ferried him to the doctor’s surgery.

Mr Webster said: “It was an outbreak which could have been avoided by the exercise of even a moderate amount of care.”

He told the jury that Mrs Beckingham, who had been with the council for 14 years, was “far up the chain of command”. As head of the design services group, her job was to negotiate maintenance contracts. But, he said, Mrs Beckingham, of Grange-over-Sands, Cumbria, was so grossly negligent that she was “principally responsible” for the deaths.

“Until she was instrumental in its cancellation, there had been a contract which ensured that the necessary tests were carried out on the air-conditioning system and that it was kept, by chemical dosing and cleaning, in a safe condition.

“She then negotiated, after a gap of months . . . a new contract, which did not provide for any water treatment regime for the cooling towers,” he said.

Mrs Beckingham had been warned by service engineers about the serious dangers brewing at Forum 28 but “failed to take any effective action and the tragedy unfolded”.

One man, Bernard Gardner, the business development manager of Climate Services, who was called in to provide a quotation for replacement machinery, described the plant as the worst he had seen. Then in May, 2002, two members of staff noticed plumes of steam coming out of the cooling tower. They went straight to Mrs Beckingham to warn her that water treatment needed sorting out as a matter of urgency. She asked for a quote but did not follow it up.

“You might have thought, given that she was the principal architect of the situation, that there was a clear responsibility upon her to do so,” Mr Webster said. “She failed.”

Mrs Beckingham denies seven charges of manslaughter. She has pleaded not guilty to unlawfully killing six women and one man. She also denies a further charge of failing to take reasonable care about the health and safety of staff and members of the public.

Barrow Borough Council also denies manslaughter but admitted at an earlier hearing the same charge of failing to take proper care.

The trial continues.

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