A company has been fined £7,500 following an explosion at an Aberdeen hotel.

Three people were seriously injured in the incident at Drumtochty Arms Hotel in Aberdeen in January 2009. The damage caused by the blast was so extensive that the building had to be demolished.

Instant Catering Maintenance (ICM) Ltd had been employed to design and install a new ground floor kitchen at the premises. On the day of the incident, a very strong smell of gas was noticed by a member of staff, just moments before the explosion occurred. A barmaid, a customer and a worker for ICM were seriously injured in the incident.


At Aberdeen Sheriff Court on Wednesday (25 June), the court heard that ICM designed and installed a steel manifold to supply propane gas to appliances, but it was not fitted with an adequate facility to allow for safe purging of the system, which would have prevented gas build-up to dangerous levels. An investigation by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), found that a regulator supplied with the chargrill had not been fitted, while the regulators on the hotplate and hob had been attached the wrong way round and set for natural gas rather than propane.

Instant Catering Maintenance Limited of Union Street, Aberdeen, was fined £7,500 after pleading guilty to breaching Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974.

(JP/MH)