Hobbledown still awaiting safety checks (From Your Local Guardian)

Hobbledown adventure park still awaiting safety checks

10:11am Thursday 11th October 2012 in Top Stories By Hardeep Matharu

An adventure park where a 10-year-girl was injured over a month ago is still waiting for health and safety inspectors to visit.

The owners closed the high ropes section at Hobbledown adventure park in Horton Lane, Epsom, immediately after the accident on September 4 when the girl fell 3m to the ground after a rope snapped.

It has remained closed since then and has had to give discounted tickets to visitors and lay-off staff at weekends while it waits for Epsom and Ewell Council to instruct experts from the Health and Safety Executive to inspect the closed section.

The park's co-owner, Nick De Candole, said: "We’re still waiting on the council for healthy and safety to come down. The high ropes section won’t open until we’re satisfied that it won’t happen again.

"People have still been coming through the doors and have been very supportive, but we are having to run discounted prices at the moment because the high ropes section is shut so there have been considerable financial consequences.

"Hobbledown was a big new and exciting project, creating lots of new jobs and now six people each weekend don’t have any work."

A council spokeswoman said: "The incident at Hobbledown remains under investigation and the owners of the site have undertaken not to use the equipment until the reason for failure has been identified by forensic engineers acting for the council.

"The council does not wish to apply artificial deadlines to the investigation process."

The adventure park opened in July after a multi-million pound investment. The injured girl is believed to have made a full recovery.