'This is massively widespread' says trainer after second fine for staff failing to wear safety equipment

Use of social media has proved expensive for Phil Kirby for the second time in four years, as the North Yorkshire trainer was fined £650 by a disciplinary panel on Monday.

Images posted to his Facebook page showed his staff had been riding horses in his care while not wearing body protectors, as required by rule. Kirby had been fined £500 for the same offence in September 2020, when the evidence used against him consisted of images from his stable's Twitter feed.

During Monday's hearing, the trainer protested about the difficulty of getting work-riders to comply, arguing that he had made a significant effort to meet his responsibilities since the last fine.

"We can't have people everywhere watching them get on horses all the time," he said. "I never let them ride down the gallop when I see them or my senior staff see them.

"It's the same few people, I would say. Usually the licensed jockeys. They're fully aware that they have to wear them. They're the ones we have to tell, more than the full-time staff."

A sign posted at Kirby's yard said any fines would be passed on to the rider who triggered the breach, but he conceded that was an empty threat. "The staff would just leave. They've not got the money to pay it anyway, and it's so difficult to get staff," he said.

"My biggest problem with the whole thing is that I feel that at some point the staff or the jockeys have got to become responsible for themselves. They're all aware of their responsibilities. You can't babysit everybody all the time. It's not that I don't care; I do care. I just don't know how you manage it any better than what we're trying to do."

Phil Kirby: fined £650 by a disciplinary panel on MondayCredit: David Carr

Charlotte Davison, presenting the BHA's case, accepted that Kirby had posted signs in the yard insisting that body protectors must be worn and that he had inserted a requirement to wear one into his standard contract of employment.

But she added: "If this was a yard where regular checks were being made and where it was common knowledge that you must wear body protectors, then not only would we not have the breach, but we wouldn't have the situation where senior members of staff are posting evidence of the breach to Mr Kirby's own social media page."

Asked how often staff neglect to wear body protectors while riding, Kirby guessed at "a few times through the month", though he later said protectors were worn 99.9 per cent of the time. He insisted the problem was not confined to his stable.

"This is massively widespread," he said. "It's a problem that's happening all through every yard. It's just that I'm being found more than everybody else. You can very easily go through lots of other people's websites and see that other people are not doing it.

"I've done lots of things to try to stop this happening, but I believe that I need some help from somebody else to tell me how you can stop people not wearing them when they're completely told all the time."

Davison responded by pointing to a four-page document published by the National Trainers Federation in 2019, addressing the question of how to ensure staff compliance. "It doesn't appear that he's followed any of that advice," she said.

Delivering the panel's verdict, Philippa Charles told Kirby: "The fact that on a public-facing website there is evidence of non-compliance is obviously a matter that we are required to take seriously." But she ruled that the BHA's proposed fine of £750 did not give sufficient credit to the trainer for the effort he had already made and reduced it by £100.

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