UK Athletics was fined £350,000 on Tuesday over the corporate manslaughter of Abdullah Hayayei, the Paralympian killed when a 440lb (200kg) practice cage collapsed on his head at a London leisure centre in 2017. The governing body pleaded guilty to the charge, and the sentencing judge called the death wholly avoidable.
The cage had been donated to the sport after the 2012 Olympics. The court heard it was never once assembled with the base plates that held it upright. An identical cage had already toppled over in 2012. By the time a gust caught the structure around Hayayei on 11 July 2017, the organisation had been on notice for five years.
The Collapse at Newham Leisure Centre
Hayayei, 36, was a father of five and a wheelchair user who had cerebral palsy. He had travelled from the United Arab Emirates to compete in the shot put at the 2017 World Para Athletics Championships in Stratford. On the afternoon of 11 July, he was training at Newham Leisure Centre in east London under the supervision of his national coach.
The five-metre throwing cage was a portable, free-standing metal frame. It had been set up without its stabilising base plates, the lattice connectors that anchored the structure and gave it resistance against wind. When a sudden gust moved the whole cage, the bar across the top fell directly onto Hayayei’s head.
He collapsed at once. Medics cut him free from the netting and worked to revive him, but he never regained consciousness and was pronounced dead at 7.20pm. Ayman Mohamed Ali Ibrahim, the UAE team coach who was supervising the session, said in a statement that he and his assistant rushed to help the moment the bar came down.
A Cage That Was Never Built Right
This was the part of the case that turned a fatal accident into a criminal conviction. UK Athletics had taken possession of two identical cages from the London 2012 organising committee. Over the following five years, the court heard, neither was ever properly assembled with the base plates fitted. The failure was not a single oversight on one bad afternoon; it was a routine that ran for half a decade.
Prosecutor John Price KC (King’s Counsel, the senior barrister leading the case) told the court that countless athletes had stood inside or walked close to the cages during that time. He described it as a perennial hazard, an accident waiting to happen.
- 2012: UK Athletics receives two practice cages from the London 2012 organising committee. One collapses that year, though no one is hurt.
- 2012 to 2017: Neither cage is ever assembled correctly with its base plates attached.
- 11 July 2017: A gust topples the cage at Newham Leisure Centre and the top bar strikes Abdullah Hayayei, who dies that evening.
- After the incident: A prohibition notice bars both cages from use; an attempt to have the notice lifted on the second cage is refused.
- 2026: UK Athletics is sentenced for corporate manslaughter at the Old Bailey.
Why the Fine Stopped at £350,000
Corporate manslaughter carries a fine of between £180,000 and £20 million under the Sentencing Council’s corporate manslaughter guideline. The guideline uses an organisation’s turnover to set a starting point, then asks the court to step back and weigh profit margins, the impact on employees and the body’s ability to keep operating.
UK Athletics reported annual revenue of £13.8 million and a modest profit of £107,000 in accounts to March 2025, and told the court it expects a loss of around £400,000 in the following year. Judge Richard Marks KC said the failings were not a one-off, but noted that any large financial penalty would weaken the body’s ability to support individual athletes and grassroots athletics. The fine and £44,000 in costs are to be paid over six years.
The case produced two defendants with very different outcomes. UK Athletics, the national governing body, carried the corporate charge. Keith Davies, the head of sport for the 2017 championships, faced an individual health and safety count.
| Defendant | Charge | Plea | Penalty |
|---|---|---|---|
| UK Athletics Ltd | Corporate manslaughter | Guilty | £350,000 fine plus £44,000 costs, payable over six years |
| Keith Davies, 79 | Health and Safety at Work Act offence | Guilty | Community order, 175 hours unpaid work |
Keith Davies and the Base Plates He Said Never Came
Davies, a retired physical education teacher, had been involved in acquiring the cages before the 2012 Games and oversaw their assembly and use until 2017. He claimed UK Athletics had never been supplied with base plates at all. That claim did not hold up.
The base plates for one of the cages had been photographed in storage at the London stadium and were later moved to Cambridge after the incident. The plates for the cage that collapsed have never been recovered, despite searches. The judge told Davies he knew, or ought to have known, that the plates were an integral part of the cage’s construction, and that the earlier collapse had put him on notice.
The Crown Prosecution Service treated the individual failings as part of a wider picture set out in its guidance on corporate manslaughter prosecutions, which requires evidence that a gross breach by senior management caused the death.
A Widow’s Testimony and a Four-Year Investigation
Hayayei’s widow, Badriah, attended the hearing by videolink from the UAE. Their five children were aged between two and 14 when their father died. She asked the court to weigh the full scale of the harm done to the family.
My husband went out to represent his country and raise the name of the UAE, but he returned as a corpse because of this negligence.
That was Badriah Hayayei, speaking to the court about the loss of her husband. The conviction followed a long and detailed inquiry led by the Metropolitan Police alongside Newham’s health and safety team, set out by Detective Chief Inspector Lucie Card of Scotland Yard.
- 1,500+ documents reviewed by detectives during the investigation.
- 160 witness statements taken from those involved.
- 5 years the cages went without correct assembly before the death.
- £350,000 the fine imposed against a body reporting £13.8 million in revenue.
What the Verdict Leaves Behind for Athletics Safety
Card said the death arose from negligent approaches to health and safety and a failure to build the cage with the equipment that kept it standing. She described it, in the phrase that ran through the whole case, as a tragedy waiting to happen.
UK Athletics said it was deeply and genuinely sorry, and that substantial changes had since been made to how safety, governance and event operations are managed across the sport. It said it accepted the court’s decision and would continue that work.
The prohibition notice that grounded both cages after July 2017 stayed in place; the request to put the second cage back into use was turned down. For a structure that had stood incorrectly assembled for five years, that refusal was the first time the equipment was treated as the hazard it had always been.
The fine will take six years to pay. The base plates that would have prevented all of it sat in storage the entire time.
