THREE companies were fined for safety breaches after a Mirfield man was killed on a construction site.

Gareth Stanley, 23, died when he was struck by two cars as he tried to control traffic on a busy road where he was working.

And in court yesterday three companies digging trenches for cable laying beside the bypass admitted responsibility for the death.

Deputy District Judge Richard Manning, sitting at Harrogate Magistrates' Court, heard how Gareth, son of Michael Stanley, managing director of Stanley Land Drainage, had been struck by two cars as he attempted to hold up traffic on the Harrogate and Knaresborough southern bypass so a digger could be taken to a compound on a nearby farm for the night.

The company, of Crow Royd Farm, North Moor Lane, Kirkheaton, Huddersfield, pleaded guilty to failing to ensure the health and safety of employees.

Another sub-contractor, pipeline specialists JFD Utility Services, of Balme Road, Cleckheaton, and main contractors ABB Ltd, of Daresbury, Warrington, each pleaded guilty to failing to ensure those carrying out the work and motorists were not exposed to risks to their safety.

Health and Safety Executive prosecutor Michael Elliker said ABB was responsible for the electrical infrastructure at St James' Retail Park beside the bypass at Knaresborough.

The other two companies had been called in because a 1,700-metre trench was needed on the north side verge.

Gareth Stanley, of Sunnybank Road, Mirfield, had been one of those working there on December 1, 2003, when he had been stopping traffic.

He was struck by one car and knocked across the road into the path of another.

Stanley's counsel Richard Kovalevsky said there had been several requests from Michael Stanley to North Yorkshire County Council, as highways authority, for temporary traffic lights to be installed. They had been rejected.

The county council had made its ruling because it was not envisaged that anyone on the site would have to stand in the carriageway.

Without lights, the only way vehicles could reach their compound had been to move into gaps in the line of traffic.

Mr Kovalevsky said: ''Mr Stanley is left with the deep, deep sense that there has been a significant failing and unfairness in these proceedings.

"And it is a terrible irony that when this job carried on the local authority insisted there were traffic lights."

Fining each company £18,000 the judge said Gareth Stanley had agreed to watch the digger driver carry out ''a dangerous manoeuvre."

He also awarded costs of £11,328.96 against ABB, £11,840.96 against JFD and £11,191.96 against Stanley's.

The judge said an inquest had been told by a county council witness that is would have been safer to have traffic lights even if the whole of the work had been carried out on the verge.

So the authority must have been aware of the significant risk posed by on-site activities.

The jury had considered temporary lights should have been in place from the beginning.