THE co-owner of a large sporting and farming estate has been fined £20,000 after a great-grandfather died in an all-terrain vehicle on remote moorland.

Retired businessman James Gaffney was collecting dead game following one of the regular pheasant shoots on the Urra Estate, in the North York Moors, when he lost control of the vehicle as he drove down a slope on October 31 last year.

The sentencing at Darlington Magistrates Court follows the National Farmers Union and Country Landowners Association urging farmers not to be so cavalier towards health and safety after it emerged Yorkshire and the North East was the country’s worst agricultural accident blackspot.

The court heard the 78-year-old married father-of-three, had not been wearing a seatbelt and suffered fatal head injuries.

Mr Gaffney, of Hutton Rudby, near Stokesley, who had retired from running a industrial gas business and had previously worked as a beater on the estate's shoots, was found trapped in the vehicle later that day and was pronounced dead at the scene.

Prosecuting, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) said Malcolm Reeve, who bought the estate in 2004 after leasing the Upsall Castle Shoot, near Thirsk, for the previous nine years, was responsible for managing health and safety on the estate.

The court was told no one on the estate, which charges participants more than £30 per shot bird at runs it events it runs over 2,800 acres between September and January, had bothered to use the seat belt on the all-terrain vehicle as no one had been told they had to.

The HSE said no one had witnessed the incident and the vehicle Mr Gaffney – who had had been paid for his work – had been driving had no significant defects and that he had used it before.

Mr Reeve, 63, of Chop Gate, was also ordered to pay £1,681 in costs after admitting breaching the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974.

Mr Reeve, who bought and transformed the 160-acre Lord Stones Country Park at nearby Carlton Bank last year, declined to comment when approached by The Northern Echo.

Investigating HSE inspector Julian Franklin said: “This was a very tragic event that could have so easily been prevented.

"It is more than likely that use of the seatbelt would have saved Mr Gaffney’s life.

“All terrain vehicles are capable of travelling on very rough and steep ground, but if they do overturn, the driver needs to be retained in the cab.”