HEALTH and Safety Officers are preparing a file on a farmyard tragedy where a five-year-old girl died, to see if further action is necessary.

Abi Emma Guy died after she was dragged underneath a slurry tanker at her father's home at Shaygate Farm, Skipton Old Road, Colne, on August 4.

An inquest in Burnley was told she had been helping her six-year-old cousin Jimmy Anderson clean tractors with a power washer and probably never heard the tractor and tanker which was being reversed by 19-year-old farm worker James Garlick.

A jury returned a verdict of accidental death.

Roger Kendrick, principal inspector for the Health and Safety Executive in Lancashire, said: "The investigation into the circumstances and cause are not yet complete, but will be shortly.

"A report will be given to senior management for a decision on further action."

At the inquest, Abi's father Graham Guy told East Lancashire coroner David Smith he had not seen the approved code of practice for children and young people on farms.

Mr Kendrick likened the code to the Highway Code and said it had the same status in law.

He said: "If people don't know that is not an excuse.

"If people say they haven't heard of the Highway Code they should have seen it and that goes for the approved code.

"It is well publicised in the national farming press that the code exists. "It sets out the safe and proper way that things should be done for the safety of children and young people on farms. It is really no more than common sense and logic.

"What we want to get over to the public of this nation is that farms are not playgrounds for children and because children live at farms and visit farms to play with their friends then obviously extra precautions have to be taken to safeguard those children.

"Statistics show time after time after time that the risks are too great to allow them to play unsupervised in the work place.

Two other children have died in farming incidents since April this year; a four-year-old girl in Wales who was also run over by a tractor and a 14-year-old boy from Scotland who was burned alive while playing in a barn filled with straw.

Seventy three children have been killed on farms in the last 12 years.

Mr Kendrick added: "I cannot accept the comment after an injury to a child that 'this was just another tragic accident'.

"Experience unfortunately shows that this is rarely the case.

"The message to do more must be brought home by whatever it takes."

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