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Instead of paying the 拢10m fine ordered by the judge at the Old Bailey, Balfour Beatty has had it reduced to 拢7.5m by the Court of Appeal. Balfour, being a decent chastened lot, will no doubt send the 拢2.5m bonus to the 102 people injured and the families of the four who lost their lives. Not many hours before the Hatfield rail disaster, I was on another train on that line. I travel on it all the time. I vividly recall being jolted in my seat. No, I can鈥檛 swear it was at Hatfield, but it was thereabouts. I shrugged it off. Or did so until the lunchtime news bulletin described the restaurant car of the high speed train having its roof ripped off.

The 拢10m fine was for a simple criminal offence: exposing the general public to risks to our health or risks to our safety when conducting your business. Just putting folk 鈥渁t risk鈥� is a criminal offence. Injury or worse puts the sentence up of course but the offence is risk: 鈥淚t shall be the duty of every employer to conduct his undertaking in such a way as to ensure, as far as reasonably practicable, that persons not in his employment [you and me] who may be affected thereby are not thereby exposed to risks to their health and safety.鈥� That鈥檚 been the law for 30-years.

The bewildering feature of the Balfour case, for me at least, is that Balfour Beatty is an utterly professional enterprise that took and takes its duties towards public safety so seriously. And yet its team at Hitchin, the team in Hertfordshire, went so wrong.

The Hitchin office was 鈥淔red Carno鈥檚 Circus鈥�, 鈥渁 Shambles鈥�, 鈥渢he blind leading the blind鈥�. No that鈥檚 not me saying that. That鈥檚 the Old Bailey judge agreeing with counsel. It was a 拢368m, seven-year contract. The firm鈥檚 job was to inspect 330 miles of track between London and Berwick-upon-Tweed. On a weekly basis trackmen did a visual check of every yard of track against a specified list of defects. An inspector admitted that what he was doing was useless. The risk in the uselessness is a criminal offence; three quarters of a million passengers a year travel the Hatfield line. And it鈥檚 not just the inspector who has gone wrong. The judge said that senior management was to blame, since it 鈥渙ught to know鈥�. Then on an eight-week basis there was to be a special inspection by a route section manager. That fellow let it creep from eight weeks to five and a half months. Incidentally he forged a report falsely recording an inspection not long before the derailment. Then there was supposed to be a biennial check by a track . It was done just two months before the crash. In a nutshell the visual inspections, which should have discovered the defective state of the track, were largely a useless formality, were known by those inspecting to be such and this state of affairs should have come to the attention of senior management.

Next came ultrasonic testing 鈥� a walking stick machine is pushed along the rail, making a recorded scan. The results spelt danger but 鈥渢hose to whom reports were made were not competent to deduce this鈥�. They had not received appropriate training.

Not many hours before the Hatfield rail disaster, I was on another train on that line. I travel on it all the time

If a firm the size of Balfour having a huge resource didn鈥檛 put in place proper training, what hope the rest?

On day 93 of the trial Balfour changed its plea from not guilty to guilty. All that was left was the sentence. Historically, fines for such offences have been too low. That鈥檚 gone. Gone too are low fines for small companies, big for big. It鈥檚 the offence and risk that counts. What also counts is running a risk with my skin with a view to profit in your pocket. The fine goes up. The objective is to bring a message home, not only to the firm鈥檚 managers but also to those who own it, as shareholders. True, you can mitigate the fine by a prompt admission of responsibility, plea of guilty, steps to remedy differences. By the way Balfour did forthwith act with exemplary measures after the accident to prevent any future recurrence of the event. The fine of 拢10m did however reflect sentencing guidelines and 鈥渋ncompetence of a serious order鈥�.

So, why did the Court of Appeal lop off 拢2.5m? Well now, the judge fined the other guilty defendant, Railtrack, 拢3.5m. The disparity between the two fines was too great. The test in law is whether an objective outsider knowing the circumstances would consider that something had gone wrong with the administration of justice when comparing the two fines and the Lord Chief Justice said, yes. The gate was thus opened for the Court of Appeal to review the fine. That鈥檚 as may be, just remember, as a builder or architect or surveyor or engineer, don鈥檛 put the public鈥檚 skin at risk, much less cause the skin actual harm.