Nicholas Bannister cleared of causing Judith Wadsworth's death

Nicholas Bannister, 64, of Bell Busk, north-west of Skipton, was acquitted of causing death by careless driving at Bradford Crown Court on Tuesday.

The case was thrown out as events took a dramatic twist and the jury formally gave a not guilty verdict on His Honour Judge Jonathan Gibson’s direction.

Michael Smith, for the prosecution, said just after 12pm that the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) had a duty to continually review a case and had come to a decision that in light of all the evidence put before the court “there is no longer a realistic prospect of conviction”.

Nicholas Bannister outside Bradford Crown Court on Monday, September 11 (Image: Telegraph & Argus)

Mr Bannister struck 66-year-old Baildon grandmother Judith Wadsworth with his Range Rover at 5.21pm on February 7, 2020 at Coniston Hotel and Spa, at Coniston Cold, the night before her daughter’s wedding.

Mrs Wadsworth was returning from the car park to reception – where her daughter and the maid-of-honour were - with a number of items when she was hit on a walkway for pedestrians, just an hour after she had arrived at the hotel.

The prosecution put forward the case that Mr Bannister not seeing Mrs Wadsworth when turning right at a t-junction to get onto the hotel’s access road was “evidence he was driving carelessly”.

But the court heard Mr Bannister’s case was he was not careless and said in a police interview eight hours after the crash that he turned the corner and “looked one way, looked the other and didn’t see the lady sadly, I just didn’t see her”.

A map of Coniston Hotel and Spa with key locations pointed out (Image: Google Maps)

The defence’s view was “that what occurred was an unfortunate accident, that he took care to perform the correct manoeuvre”.

Mr Bannister said he only realised something had happened when he heard a “terrible noise” under his vehicle, assuming something was wrong with it, and stopped 20 metres from the crossover.

The 64-year-old had been in the reception himself at the same time as Mrs Wadsworth and the wedding party, having left his office at 5pm and taken a call from his son – Rodrick.

Rodrick was coming from London to Skipton and was going to get a taxi from the station.

Mr Bannister’s plan was to go to the gym for a run before this and wished his staff a good weekend as he went outside the hotel reception to head towards the spa area of the complex, 300 to 400m away.

Just 21 minutes after leaving his office and moments after exiting the hotel, he had hit Mrs Wadsworth and run over the top of her.

Judith Wadsworth, who died aged 66 after being struck by a Range Rover (Image: North Yorkshire Police)

Experts in the case estimated that he hit the pedestrian at between nine and 12 miles per hour.

Mr Bannister got out of the car alongside employee Natasha Hobson-Shaw who had been driving the other way and saw Mrs Wadsworth in the road, then went over to try help.

He said in his only police interview: "There was a lot of blood at the scene, we did what we could."

He added: "We did what we could, sadly in vain."

Mr Bannister was arrested after providing a negative roadside breath test and it was soon proved he also had not been using his phone at the wheel or was under the influence of any substance.

He said: "The family was there, was distraught, I wanted to stay for obvious reasons."

The hotel, with the car park area in the foreground, the pedestrian footpath heading to the reception area visible in the top-centre, and the road Nicholas Bannister turned out from before hitting Judith Wadsworth on the left of the building to the right (Image: Google Street View)

A preliminary inquest hearing heard that Mrs Wadsworth suffered head and chest injuries in the collision and died at the scene.

There were issues raised about the prosecution’s case throughout the trial and this reared its head on Monday when PC Emma Drummond – the Officer In Charge (OIC) of the case – was cross-examined by Mrs Judge.

The officer told jurors that she had recorded the exact position of Mrs Wadsworth’s Mini Cooper Clubman in the hotel car park in her “green book” – where she wrote down details of the investigation.

Inside was also information about the positioning of Mrs Wadsworth and Mr Bannister’s car at the point of the collision, retrieved from speaking to key eyewitness Mrs Hobson-Shaw at the reconstruction.

This never made it into an official statement though and PC Drummond admitted it should have.

Nicholas Bannister (Image: PA)

Defence barrister Lisa Judge told the court that the information about Mrs Wadworth’s car had not been made available to the defence team and the notebook had not been disclosed by the CPS.

She said these “flagrant failures on behalf of the prosecution” meant much of the case presented against her client was no longer admissible.

She told Judge Gibson that the information about the location of the Mini fundamentally changed how the reconstruction could be interpreted by the various experts who gave evidence in the trial.

The 64-year-old declined to comment after the trial came to an end.

Coniston Hotel and Spa, at Coniston Gold (Image: Other)