A SENIOR council employee was accused of misleading health and safety chiefs about headstone inspections before a child was killed in a cemetery.

Alasdair Brown, former head of environment and sustainability at Glasgow City council, was questioned during a Fatal Accident inquiry into the death of Ciaran Williamson on May 26, 2015.

The eight-year-old was playing in Craigton Cemetery with friends when a headstone fell on him, severing his brain stem and causing an immediate cardiac arrest.

The inquiry heard Mr Brown wrote to the health and safety executive (HSE) following the tragedy.

In his letter he said the council had established a “formal process of inspection” before 2015.

The letter also said: “Whilst there does not seem to be any formal inspections undertaken from 2011 there are reports of a number of inspections on an ad-hoc basis.”

Paperwork sent to the HSE included 11 records from inspections at some of Glasgow’s 32 cemeteries 2006 and 2011.

An example of one record from Sandymount cemetery dated back to 2006 and recorded three memorials being checked.

Dorothy Bain QC representing Ciaran’s mum Stephanie Griffin questioned Mr Brown about the records.

She said: “There’s no record for Craigton here.”

The witness replied: “There’s no record for Craigton.

Ms Bain put to him: “The records - clearly meaningless, aren’t they?”

Mr Brown said he “wasn’t familiar with guidance” but said he would have thought they would have asked for “more explicit records”.

Ms Bain continued “If this is all there is, there is no evidence whatsoever of what you have told the inspectorate, namely a formal process for the inspection of memorials within burial grounds.

“It’s completely misleading the inspectorate.”

The witness replied: “I would have expected the inspectorate if they were unhappy with phraseology to come back to me for more records.”

Mr Brown said that from 2003 onwards it was a “fairly unplanned activity”.

The inquiry also heard from an expert witness, Mr William Revie, who inspected and analysed the gravestone which crushed Ciaran last year.

Mr Revie , director of Construction Materials Consultants Limited, told the court he examined the section of the headstone which fell on to Ciaran, and the remaining base piece which was still at Craigton Cemetery.

He found the stone’s construction was “consistent with the normal practice” at the time it was erected, thought to be around 100 years ago.

Mr Revie’s report stated the stability of the memorial “will have relied on its mass and on its base stones being laid flat”.

The witness was asked by Procurator Fiscal depute Gail Adair whether a tree growing near the stone could have affected its stability, to which he responded the roots “could apply a force to the base stone” which could have had an impact.

The inquiry previously heard a tree growing beside the stone was used to climb on by at least once child in the cemetery on the day of Ciaran’s death.

Mr Revie also said the stone showed signs of weathering, and water had been flowing over and into it “for some time”, weakening the joints.