The damning findings from the M9 fatal crash probe as Police Scotland failings revealed

A young mother died after suffering “devastating injuries” in a car crash that saw her forced to lie next to the body of her partner for more than 72 hours due to an “organisational failure” at the heart of Police Scotland’s call handling procedures, a fatal accident inquiry (FAI) has concluded.

In a damning indictment of the national force’s protocols and training, Sheriff James Williamson ruled Lamara Bell would “probably have survived” had she been rescued on July 5, 2015 – the day she and her partner, John Yuill, were involved in a serious road traffic accident on the M9.

A sergeant at the force’s Bilston Glen call handling centre received a call from a farmer in the hours after the accident, reporting a vehicle that had come off the motorway. However, the sergeant failed to log it into the force’s Storm case management system and no action was taken.

It was not until the morning of July 8 that emergency services attended the scene following a report from another member of the public. Ms Bell, a mother-of-two, was taken to Glasgow’s Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, but as a result of the delay in treatment and hypothermia, she suffered a “very severe” secondary brain injury, leading to her death four days later.

Sheriff Williamson said Ms Bell was “terribly injured”, but conscious in the time between the crash and the rescue. He described the extent of her suffering over those three days in the trapped wreckage of the car as “almost incomprehensible”.

Ms Bell, 25, and Mr Yuill, a 28 year-old father-of-five, were travelling on the M9 near Stirling on their way back from a camping trip when their Renault Clio came off the motorway at some time between 6am and 6.15am on July 5 that year. Their car crashed into trees before coming to a stop at the bottom of an embankment. Mr Yuill suffered unsurvivable head and abdominal injuries and died around or shortly after 6am.

Ms Bell sustained multiple injuries in the crash, but after being exposed to the elements for three days, also suffered dehydration, acute kidney failure and hypotension. Sheriff Williamson’s determination noted that had Ms Bell been admitted to hospital on July 5, the primary head injury she suffered would have been managed, with any secondary complications arising from it “substantially avoided”.

John Yuill and Lamara Bell were not discovered until three days after the crash due "organisational failure" in police call handling procedures, the fatal accident inquiry has found. Picture: Police Scotland/PA Wire

He added: “Had she received medical treatment on July 5, 2015, Lamara Bell would probably have survived. Had she survived she would have suffered a long-term neurological deficit.”

In setting out the failures that led to the delay in the emergency response, Sheriff Williamson said there was no system of reconciling or cross-checking information recorded by officers in notebooks – known as ‘pot books’ – with action taken, and no assessment of the risk posed by the use of such books. He described it as a “defective system of work”.

The determination found Police Scotland had failed to adequately train Brian Henry, the now retired sergeant who received the initial call from the farmer, John Wilson, but did not record it in the force’s Storm case management system. The FAI heard Mr Henry was in a “confused, fractious working environment” at Bilston Glen, with the call centre under pressure amid staffing shortages. There was confusion among some officers about the tripartite call handling framework comprising Storm and systems known as Aspire and Avaya.

“Brian Henry was inadequately trained and left largely unsupervised to operate a system that allowed for human error to go undetected,” Sheriff Williamson concluded. “His human error going undetected meant that Lamara Bell was left in a vehicle by the side of a major motorway in Scotland suffering devastating injuries. These injuries, together with the delay in rescuing and treating her, led to her death.”

Sheriff Williamson added: “The failure of Police Scotland to properly risk assess the call handling procedures and have a system of reconciliation was an organisational failure. An organisational failure which led to the safety of the public being compromised and to the events of July 5, 2015.”

The family of Ms Bell was awarded more than £1 million in damages from Police Scotland in a civil settlement in December 2021. In September that year, the force was fined £100,000 at the High Court in Edinburgh after it pleaded guilty to health and safety failings which “materially contributed” to Ms Bell's death.

Sheriff Williamson’s determination said the public “can be confident” that since the incident in 2015, Police Scotland’s Contact, Command and Control Division (C3 Division) has been transformed into an “efficient, tightly-controlled and sophisticated complex of service centres all capable of communicating with each other on a unified IT network” that is better able to serve and protect the public than in 2015.

Police Scotland’s Deputy Chief Constable Alan Speirs said: “Police Scotland failed Lamara and John in 2015 and I repeat the personal apology made previously to their loved ones. We did not keep them safe in their time of need as was our duty and for that I am truly sorry.

“We have fully participated with all inspections, investigations and inquiries established since July 2015 to identify what went wrong and to do everything we possibly can to stop a terrible incident such as this being repeated. Sheriff Williamson's findings highlight the significant improvements which have been made to our call handling systems. How we respond to 999 and 101 calls now is incomparable to how we dealt with them in 2015.”

He added: “None of these provide consolation to Lamara and John's loved ones, but I can give them my assurance that lessons have been learned and that the relentless improvement of service delivery lies at the heart of everything we do. We are studying the determination in detail for any learning which will form part of this continuous improvement.”