THE owners of a North Yorkshire home for the elderly have been fined £1.6m for the “systematic and systemic” failures that led to a 91-year-old grandmother freezing to death in their care.

The Honorary Recorder of York, Judge Paul Batty QC, said Annie Barritt’s death was an “accident waiting to happen” as he outlined a series of problems at Oaklands Country Rest Home, Kirk Hammerton, where she lived in the months before her death.

“It was not an isolated occurrence”, he said of how the home had apparently ignored a hospital’s request: “Please keep the patient warm”, received by the home a few days before she died, and other failures.

Her son David, speaking on behalf of her family, said outside court: “It is hard to believe that an elderly lady with dementia could have been treated in such an appalling way in a care home that claimed to specialise in the care of such vulnerable people.

“No fine, no matter how large could ever replace a loved one; what price can you put on your mother’s life.

“We can only hope that Mother’s sad and unnecessary death may have served to improve the standards at Maria Mallaband Care Homes and God willing prevent such a tragic event from ever happening again.”

He and other relatives of Mrs Barritt sat through the three-day hearing and were congratulated by the judge on their dignity in very difficult circumstances.

Maria Mallaband Care Homes Group Ltd of Leeds, the national company that owns the home, pleaded guilty to breaching the Health and Safety at Work Act. Its barrister James Maxwell-Scott QC said it has a yearly turnover of £50 million, but is currently trading at a loss.

Fining it £1.6m plus the £45,560 costs of Harrogate Borough Council which brought the prosecution, the judge took into account the company’s assets and what it paid its directors.

“It is well able to afford a significant financial penalty and that significant financial penalty should bring home to this company how very serious these breaches were,” he said.

Earlier he had said: “The defendant company held itself out as experts in the field of care for those with dementia and other mental health issues.”

But the way it had handled and minimised the risk to its residents at the home had been “wholly inadequate”.

He said it was “disturbing” that a large company in the care sector where the importance of keeping elderly people warm was well known had let the home run out of heating fuel on more than one occasion the previous winter.

The judge told York Crown Court that Mrs Barritt’s family had placed her in the home which they thought “would be the safest place” for her. She had suffered from dementia for five years and lived in the home’s specialist mental illness unit.

Just over a week before Mrs Barritt’s death on November 4, 2012, North Yorkshire County Council had suspended any referrals to the home because of failures it found during its inspection regarding residents’ care plans.

On October 29, an employee had been so concerned about the temperature in residents’ rooms including Mrs Barritt’s she had found extra heaters and put them in the lounge and corridor.

Visiting his mother on October 31, Mr Barritt had felt her hand was cold and had told the staff about it and that the radiator in her room was cold.

On the day she died the deputy manager, who was “totally unsuitable” for the job and who had told management he did not feel competent to do it, had taken the “extraordinary” decision not to wake her so she could have hot food, hot drinks or her medication, the judge said.

Earlier in the case, he heard that when she was taken to hospital that evening, her core temperature was 25 degrees centigrade, ten degrees below the hypothermia threshold temperature of 35 degrees.

The judge criticised the company for not taking the “obvious, sensible” precaution of putting thermometers in every bedroom in the home. The company has since done so in every one of its homes and installed a fuel level alarm on its boiler.

He said the company had not maintained the radiators and the handyman responsible for repairing them was not a qualified heating engineer and repairs were done inadequately.

In its statement, the family paid tribute to the council, which is responsible for monitoring health and safety in care homes.

“We would like to extend our thanks to Tony Moule and his team from Harrogate Borough Council for their hard and detailed work which resulte din this case finally being brought to court. Throughout the proceedings, they have liaised with us in a very helpful and sympathetic way.

“The last four years have been very hard for the family coming to terms with the tragic circumstances of Mum’s death from hypothermia.”