A CONTRACT cleaner crushed between a cherry picker lifting platform and a metal roof beam was given wholly inadequate training, an inquest jury heard.

Father-of-two Paul Edwards, 38, died at the Fish Brothers Peugeot dealership, off Swindon's Great Western Way, on November 25, 2002.

He had been part of a group of people, including several of his family, working for Midlands firm IDM.

The company had been brought in to clean Fish Brothers following a fire.

The jury at the inquest into his death recorded a verdict of death by misadventure yesterday.

Misadventure is defined as death arising from a deliberate human act which unexpectedly leads to a fatality.

The jury had heard neither Mr Edwards nor his supervisors had been trained on the type of machine he was using.

And yesterday a report on the level of training, prepared by expert Rupert Jones, was read out at the hearing.

Mr Jones said: "The operators' training appears to have been wholly inadequate, from the witness statements that I have read."

Following the jury's decision, Mr Edwards' brother, 48-year-old Stephen, who was working at the site when the accident happened, said he was gutted.

He added that he would like to have seen the jury be given the option of finding his brother was unlawfully killed.

Assistant deputy Wiltshire and Swindon coroner Nigel Brookes told the jury they could not reach a conclusion of unlawful killing because no link could be made between any inadequacies in training and Mr Edwards' death.

A post mortem examination found he suffered three broken ribs and died of traumatic asphyxia.

He had been trapped because his body was pressed against both the controls needed to raise the platform. The inquest heard that, the firm had since made sure workers using cherry pickers were trained to national standards.

Mr Brookes said he would be writing to the Health and Safety Executive to add his weight to measures proposed to make such accidents less likely, including changing the controls. A spokesman for the HSE said it was now considering further legal action.