Council's investigation into Tiny Toes Nursery in Stockport could lead to prosecutions
Katy Morton
Tuesday, June 25, 2024
Stockport Council’s trading standards team have drafted in ‘external experts’ to analyse hours of CCTV footage from Tiny Toes nursery in Cheadle Hulme where nine-month-old Genevieve Meehan was killed.
Last month, the council announced it is to carry out an investigation into possible health and safety failings at the nursery after the setting’s former deputy manager, Kate Roughley, was found guilty of the manslaughter of Genevieve and sentenced to 14 years in prison.
At the nine-month-old’s pre-inquest hearing yesterday (24 June), the court heard how the council is considering possible health and safety offences and ‘exposing children to risk’.
The solicitor for the council’s trading standards department, Michelle Dodds, said, ‘It is very much a live investigation’, and that there is ‘a lot of hours of CCTV to go through.’
Dodds told the court the trading standards investigation concerned ‘possible health and safety offences’ involving both the nursery and individuals.
Due to conclude in late autumn, the investigation will consider the Health and Safety at Work Act and prosecutions could follow.
Genevieve’s family have asked the coroner to adjourn any inquest decision until the outcome of the council’s investigation.
A further pre-inquest review is expected to be held on 9 December.
