According to the BBC, staff ignored smoke pouring out of a window at the shop, located on Oxford Street. The fire alarm sounded but was then switched off. Shop staff initially failed to react before panicking and evacuating customers from the shop. No-one was hurt in the accident; however judge Geoffrey Rivlin QC, sitting at Southwark Crown Court, stated that the fire could have been “a disaster almost too awful to contemplate”.
The fire occurred in April 2007 and began in the shop’s second floor storeroom. According to shopper Joanne Weaver, the fire alarm in the store went off intermittently but the initial absence of staff reaction did not “suggest there was a problem”. Ms Weaver and as many as 20 other shoppers were allowed to continue down to the basement floor before a member of staff announced that the shop was being evacuated.
However, an evacuation plan did not appear to exist with Ms Weaver stating that staff shifted from “no cause for alarm, to panic”. In the scramble to get out of the building, some customers fell over, while others had to duck shards of glass falling from above.
Following the ruling, a spokesman for New Look stated that subsequent to the incident New Look had “immediately implemented a comprehensive review of health and safety procedures”.
The fine imposed on the company is, quite rightly, sizeable. They appear to have lacked the foresight to properly train staff on proper evacuation procedures in the event of a fire and as such risked the lives of not only customers but also their own staff members. Without the procedures in place, there was a genuine risk that somebody could have been left in the building during the fire as there was not a system of checking in place. Hopefully this will serve as a warning to large retailers of the dangers of not complying with health and safety requirements.