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12
Sept 2023
Ripon Conservatives president denies causing death of woman by careless driving
A hotel boss ran over and killed a woman in the grounds of his spa complex, a court heard.
Nicholas Ayrton Bannister, 64, was driving his Range Rover out of a junction onto an access road near the hotel reception and car park when the vehicle struck 66-year-old Judith Wadsworth, who was a guest at the Coniston Hotel Country Estate & Spa in Skipton.
Mr Bannister, the hotel’s managing director and president of Skipton and Ripon Conservatives, turned right out of the junction and didn’t see Ms Wadsworth, a jury at Bradford Crown Court was told.
Prosecutor Michael Smith said Ms Wadsworth fell under the vehicle but it was not until Mr Bannister got out of his vehicle 20 metres down the road that he realised he had struck someone.
Ms Wadsworth, who was staying at the country hotel in Coniston Cold to see her daughter Rebecca Blacka get married, suffered fatal injuries. It’s believed she died at the scene.
Ms Blacka was in the hotel reception at the time of the fatal collision at about 5.20pm on Feb 7, 2020.
Mr Smith said:
The trial was heard at Bradford Crown Court.
Mr Bannister, who runs the family business, was also in reception chatting to staff. CCTV showed Ms Wadsworth, who is also a grandmother, drop off a box and then go back out to the car park, ostensibly to collect more items from her car.
Mr Bannister then left the reception to get into his vehicle parked outside the hotel to drive to the spa complex.
He drove the vehicle around a turning circle outside reception and turned right when the Range Rover ran over Ms Wadsworth on a walkway between the car park and the reception area.
Mr Smith said:
He said the fact that Mr Bannister didn’t see Ms Wadsworth “at all, even as he collided with her”, was “evidence that he was driving carelessly”.
Mr Smith added:
Denies causing death by careless driving
Mr Bannister, of Mark House Lane, Bell Busk, near Skipton, denies causing death by careless driving. The prosecution must prove he was driving carelessly at the time of the collision.
He appeared yesterday for the first day of his trial which is expected to last four days.
Mr Smith said that at the junction of the turning circle and the access road, visibility to the left was obscured by a hotel building and Mr Bannister would also have had to pay attention to vehicles coming from the other direction.
But he said that motorists would also have to pay attention to pedestrians to the right, where he was turning and where Ms Wadsworth, from Baildon near Bradford, was crossing the road on her way back to reception.
He said that after the Range Rover hit Mrs Wadsworth, Mr Bannister drove on for another 20 metres, only realising he had struck someone when he heard a “noise under the car”.
Natasha Hobson-Shaw, a hotel employee who was the only eye-witness to the collision, was driving out of the complex when she saw the fatal accident.
She said she was driving towards the Range Rover in the opposite direction and stopped her car to allow Mr Bannister to manoeuvre out of the junction.
Mr Smith said:
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He said that, according to Ms Hobson-Shaw, it was clear that after stopping his vehicle following the collision, Mr Bannister “simply had no clue what had happened”.
Ms Hobson-Shaw got out of her vehicle to help Ms Wadsworth and Mr Bannister said to her: “I didn’t see her.”
Mr Smith said the Range Rover was travelling at about 9-to-12mph at the point of collision.
He said there was “some debris and a bag” at the scene of the collision which Mrs Wadsworth had been carrying.
The prosecuting barrister added:
A family statement following Mrs Wadsworth’s death described her as “a devoted wife, mother and grandmother”.
The statement said:
The trial continues.
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