Building standards are to be scrutinised at the inquest of a Wigan pensioner who died when her home partially collapsed

Almost four and a half years have elapsed since 77-year-old Clarice Berry was fatally injured when the gable end of her house in Old Lane, Shevington, gave way.

At the time, the Observer told how neighbours and passers-by desperately fought to find the victim under rubble and she was eventually pulled free by firefighters but, sadly, died later that same day on July 18, 2021 in hospital.

Mrs Berry’s inquest was opened later in the month of the tragedy but a date for the full and final hearing has yet to be fixed, a pre-inquest review at Bolton Coroners’ Court heard.

Assistant coroner Bronia Hartley told interested parties – including Mrs Berry’s husband Arthur with other family members and representatives of the Health and Safety Executive and landlord S&G Properties No 2 Ltd – of the likely central issues to be covered at the hearing.

This included the knowledge of the house’s “bulging gable end" before the collapse: who knew about it and when?

A condemned boiler in the semi-detached house will also be considered.

She said she would also be seeking to find out what the response was towards the structural issue and what, if any, proactive monitoring was done.

Ms Hartley said she needed to know about the construction of the gable end and what caused it to collapse and to go through the events of July 18, 2021 in detail.

She said she was intending to request statements from Wigan Council Housing Standards which undertakes housing assessments, including of privately-rented properties.

She said these assessments are most often undertaken reactively, after receiving reports of defects and lack of repair in homes, but she said she also believed there is a degree of proactive identification of properties in need of assessment, so she would be asking about that.

Ms Hartley said she was going to ask whether Housing Standards undertakes assessments of that kind if it receives information from other agencies, in particular information sharing – if any – with the Valuation Office Agency.

And she would like to know about oversight of gas safety certification and the procedure when a property receives an F energy efficiency rating (as was the case in Mrs Berry’s home).

This is because, she said, when a home receives such a rating it is deemed “not lettable” unless a special dispensation is given.

The hearing was told that the boiler in the house had, in effect, been “condemned.”

A second pre-inquest review is now going to be held early in the new year, at a date yet to be fixed during which documentation will be discussed, which witnesses need to be called and whether a jury will be required or not.

Ms Hartley said that the final inquest hearing was likely to take “anything up to a week, but we are a little way off that at this stage.”