LONDON — A wire service reports that the Crown Prosecution Service asked police on Wednesday to conduct a new investigation into the Paddington train crash, raising the possibility that rail corporations could be charged with manslaughter 2 1/2 years after the event.
The prosecution service initially said there would be no corporate manslaughter charges over the Oct. 5, 1999, accident, which occurred when the driver of a commuter train steered it through a red light and directly into the path of an incoming high-speed express. Thirty-one people were killed and 150 injured.
The service declined to order further police investigation last October after a public inquiry into the crash, headed by Lord Douglas Cullen, found that bad signaling and poor staff training had led to the collision.
Wednesday’s change of heart followed pressure from survivors and relatives of the dead, and advice from legal experts.
Police are now being asked specifically to investigate the visibility of signals at the west London station — the red light passed by the commuter driver was noted in Cullen’s report to be difficult to see.
The prosecution service said it was reconsidering its earlier position that the management of the track and the signal layout did not contribute to the collision.
“Such a causal link is a necessary element of the offense of gross negligence manslaughter. … We believe that further police inquiries will determine whether or not there is an impediment, as we perceived it, in linking the management of the signal sighting with the actual circumstances of the Ladbroke Grove (Paddington) collision,” the service said in a statement.
Railtrack, the private company responsible for maintaining the nation’s 20,000 miles of track and 2,500 train stations, was accused by the Cullen report of a “lamentable failure” and “institutional paralysis” for not fixing the difficult-to-see signal.
The report also faulted Thames trains, the operator of the commuter train, finding that new drivers were not even taught the route in and out of Paddington Station, one of London’s busiest.
Louise Christian, a lawyer who represents some of the bereaved families, said she had threatened the prosecution service with a judicial review over its decision not to prosecute.
“We are pleased that the CPS … has recognized that it has got the law on corporate manslaughter wrong,” Christian said. “However, we are concerned that an immunity granted by the attorney general to oral and documentary evidence presented to Lord Cullen’s inquiry may hamper (police) in their efforts to find legally admissible evidence of the facts as found by Lord Cullen.”