The death of a man killed by an 18-ton tree which hit the van he was travelling home in from Alton during a storm was an accident, a coroner has concluded.

Jack Bristow, 23, was returning to Oxfordshire along Old Odiham Road when the tree fell at 11.45am on February 18 during Storm Eunice. Mr Bristow, who had a girlfriend and a young son, suffered a severe head injury and died instantly.

At an inquest in Winchester Coroner’s Court on October 4, coroner Jason Pegg heard that he had worked as a traffic management operative for Hooke Highways Limited, based at its Oxford depot, since October 2021.

On February 18, the day after Storm Eunice began, Mr Bristow was asked to travel to a site in Woking to remove equipment, at the request of a contractor, to prevent it posing a hazard in winds gusting up to 80 miles per hour.

With colleague Calum Smith driving the van, they left Oxford just before 8am, before the Met Office issued a red ‘danger to life’ weather warning. The plan was to get to Woking at 9am and return the equipment to the Alton depot before 10am, when the red weather warning would come into force. But due to the stormy conditions and careful driving, they were much slower in returning the equipment and only left the Alton depot after 11am.

Hooke Highways Limited’s head of human resources Aine Montague was asked why the decision was made to send out staff during such a strong storm. She said: “It was about whether it was essential, and it was essential to do that job. All our operatives were driving that day, we have to work through all types of adverse weather conditions.”