Trampoline park owners fined after 270 people injured with 11 suffering broken backs

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Two men who ran a trampoline park that saw 270 people injured over two months have been fined.

David Elliot Shuttleworth, 34, and Matthew Melling, 33, were the directors of Flip Out Chester, where 11 people broke their backs before it was closed down.

Some suffered “life-changing” spinal injuries and the number of people taken to A&E at the local hospital led to a delegation of medics visiting the site to see what was going on, Chester Crown Court heard.

Injuries were first reported the day after the park opened on 10 December 2016, but there was no evidence to show that the company undertook any measures to improve safety standards.

Have you been affected or injured at Flip Out Chester? Email holly.evans@independent.co.uk

Customers - many just children - were injured after using the Tower Jump, where people landed into a foam pit.

There was a “cavalier” approach to safety, the court heard, despite multiple people being injured on a daily basis.

The worst injured suffered damaged vertebrae, some resulting in lifelong health problems while many others suffered ‘knee-to-face’ injuries causing dental and facial injuries.

Among the 120 people who suffered facial injuries was a woman who suffered a severe tear that could potentially require cosmetic surgery in the future.

Shuttleworth, of Stoke-on-Trent, and Melling, of Spinningfields in Manchester, both pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to a single count of negligence under health and safety law between December 2016 and February 2017.

Judge Michael Leeming said he was passing sentence on the basis the two defendants were negligent rather than committing deliberate acts or cost-cutting at the expense of safety, and he was constrained by the sentencing guidelines and the law.

He said: “There’s no evidence the company took any steps at all, including reasonably practical ones to reduce or eliminate those risks. Common sense says investigating why an accident has happened reduces the risk of further accidents.

“The sentence will be less than many people hoped for and many people think you deserve.”

Shuttleworth was fined £6,500 and Melling £6,300, with each ordered to complete 250 hours of unpaid community service. Shuttleworth was also ordered to pay £50,000 in costs and Melling £10,000 in costs to go towards the £250,000 prosecution and council investigation.

Earlier, the court heard both men had run a franchise business Flip Out Stoke and on December 10 2016 opened Flip Out Chester, a “wildly successful” operation, which had 200,000 customers in the two months it was open.

But just a day after opening one person was injured using the Tower Jump, a feature of the park where customers could jump from a height of up to 5.3m (17 feet three inches) into a foam pit below, which presented a “risk of harm” to anyone using it, the court heard.

Between the day of opening until 3 February 2017, 270 members of the public suffered injuries using the Tower Jump: 11 suffered spinal injuries, four required surgery and 123 were injured by face-to-knee contact along with various other injuries such as broken ribs and sprained wrists.

A staff member broke her back on 6 January by bursting a vertebrae while jumping from the tower. The next day there were 11 accidents, six on 13 January and six on 18 January.

On a single day, 1 February 2017, three people suffered back injuries, with all being taken to the Countess of Chester Hospital in the city.

Staff there were already monitoring A&E admissions from Flip Out and decided they had to act. Medics sent a letter to the trampoline park and a delegation of senior doctors visited two days later.

The local council was also alerted and an investigation launched, with the Tower Jump closed on 3 February 2017.

Judge Leeming said Shuttleworth had an “unfortunate” attitude which suggested minor injuries “go with the territory” at a trampoline park.

The former directors, now both earning around £80,000 each working as business consultants, had been “chastened” by the investigation and prosecution, the court heard.

The defendants’ company, Shuttleworth and Melling Ltd, went into liquidation in 2021. A number of personal injury claims are being pursued or have already been settled.

Councillor Christine Warner of Cheshire West and Chester Council, said: “The statistics in this case are truly shocking.

“These directors were both aware that members of the public were being injured but their approach to investigating why that was happening, and therefore ensuring public safety, was negligent.

“The council is the regulator of facilities like Flip Out and has a responsibility to protect the public.

“The conviction and sentence of these two individuals sends a message to all those running popular recreation facilities of any sort.”