Ladbroke Grove

Madame Blavatsky was then living at 17 Lansdowne Road at the Holland Park end of Ladbroke Grove. The house belonged to Bertram Keightley, a well-to-do young Theosophical neophyte. 

The Ladbroke Grove Inquiry report recommends that a strategic safety management leadership team be established within each company in the Rail Industry [HSC, 2003]. This should be led by the Chief Executive of each organisation, with support from... 

The Ladbroke Grove accident prompted a more far-reaching inquiry than Southall. The terms of the inquiry for the Ladbroke Grove accident extend well beyond the specific accident, namely ... 

In the accompanying letter to Lord Cullen, who was appointed to undertake the Ladbroke Grove Inquiry, the Chair of the Health and Safety Commission also noted We should not want you to feel constrained by. .. your broader terms of reference if you consider that other issues emerge which should be fully examined. .. (HSC press release C044 99). ... 

The remit of the Southall Inquiry was much more limited to investigating the causes of the particular accident. In some senses the Ladbroke Grove Inquiry overshadowed the Southall Inquiry, and this was certainly a complaint of the victims of the Southall accident. This was partly because the Southall Inquiry was delayed because of l al action (see below). However, the importance of the Southall accident should not be underestimated. The inquiry is important in its own right and it is possible that Ladbroke Grove would have prompted a less extensive response had Southall not preceded it. 

This section will draw, where relevant, on reports resulting from the Southall and Ladbroke Grove accidents, in particular those published before May 2000. 

The Railway Inspectorate was similarly affected. HSE s internal inquiry following the Ladbroke Grove accident identified a Railway Inspectorate under very heavy pressure. It was explained that Railtrack sought to revise many of the 6,000 Railway Group Standards it inherited from BR and that privatization was accompanied by a dramatic increase in approvals of new work, a rise from 275 in 1993 to 6,000 in 1999 (HSE, 2000h). Moreover the level of complaints also increased, thus posing additional burdens on the Inspectorate. This led the Inspectorate to adopt a more selective approach to its approval procedures than it would normally have adopted (ibid.). 

Unease with the risk management techniques used by the railway industry were apparent in the Southall and Ladbroke Grove inquiries. The Southall Inquiry is blunt in its criticism risk assessment procedures have been shown to produce variable results, which are seldom rigorous and sometimes questionable. No primary or secondary paper-based system is a substitute for common sense and commitment to the job (Uff 2000 208). The evidence given by the Director of HSE to the Ladbroke Grove Inquiry concentrates more specifically on problems in the methods and perspectives used ... 

The Railway Inspectorate has also been criticized for its use of risk assessment. The main criticism was an insufficient emphasis upon risk assessment procedures, for example, in its data collection and analysis and also in its approach to safety cases (HSE, 2000 t). The validity of this criticism is borne out by recent events. The Southall and Ladbroke Grove accidents demonstrate how cautiously we should approach railway statistics because of their vulnerability to major disasters. Related to this should be some caution in basing future predictions on past performance and most particularly in using this as a basis for arguing against effecting improvements. So it is important that these analyses... 

Railtrack did actually appeal against the prohibition notice and two improvement notices issued after the Ladbroke Grove accident. HSE s internal inquiry noted that fighting such actions was resource intensive but did not necessarily accept that this is a good reason not to proceed with legal action otherwise considered justified (HSE, 2000a). 

Events Leading up to the Ladbroke Grove Rail Accident, London HSE. 

For the raiiways, the most significant of these categories is the first. Raiiways are a safe mode of transport, but they do give rise to the potentiai for accidents that kiii many peopie at once - such as Ladbroke Grove (31 deaths in 1999) and Ciapham (35 deaths in 1988). 

Stanton, N.A. and Baber, C. (2008). Modelling of human alarm handling response times a case study of the Ladbroke Grove rail accident in the UK. Ergonomics, 51(4), 423 40. 

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