THE MUM of an 11-year-old boy who died after being struck by an unsecured scaffold board in Hooe is continuing her mission to prevent another family from suffering the same tragedy.
Maria Dennis, from Hastings, has supported an annual police operation aimed at improving load safety on the country’s roads for the third successive year.
Her son Harry Dennis was just 11 when he was struck by a scaffold board which fell from a van in Hooe, East Sussex, in December 2022. He later died in hospital.
Since then, Maria has channelled her grief into raising awareness of the potentially devastating consequences of failing to properly secure loads.
She has travelled across the country to attend conferences, presentations and workshops, sharing Harry’s story and urging drivers and businesses to spend the extra few minutes needed to make sure vehicles are safe before setting off.
She said: “The accident happened, but it didn’t have to happen.
“It’s through somebody’s laziness really that Harry is no longer here.
“I need to share that message to make sure people, when they are going on the road, take that extra time to make sure their load is secure, so it doesn’t happen again.
“We lost Harry through something that was preventable. I need to be his voice, shouting for him.”
Her campaigning has helped inspire Operation Rule, led by Sussex Police’s Commercial Vehicle Unit in partnership with the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) and National Highways.
The latest operation took place on Tuesday, September 8, at the DVSA checkpoint on the northbound A23 at Handcross.
Open-bed trucks, lorries, tractors and other vehicles carrying loads were stopped and inspected, with officers looking for insecure loads and vehicles which were not roadworthy.
Although Operation Rule is a dedicated day of action, Sussex Police says checking the safety of commercial vehicles forms part of its roads policing work throughout the year.
PC Barry Freeman, of the Commercial Vehicle Unit, said Maria had been the inspiration behind the operation.
“This operation has come about as a result of a very tragic set of circumstances,” he said.
“In 2022, 11-year-old Harry Dennis was killed after he was struck by an unsecured scaffold board which fell from a van in Hooe, East Sussex.
“His mother Maria approached us and asked if she could get involved in any way to help prevent incidents like this happening to anyone else, and she is the inspiration behind this really.”
The campaign has also spread beyond Sussex, with a number of other police forces carrying out vehicle checks in their own areas.
Figures from previous operations demonstrate the scale of the problem. In 2024, 131 vehicles were stopped nationally, with 73.6 per cent found to have insecure loads. The following year, 120 vehicles were stopped across the UK, of which 59.2 per cent were carrying insecure loads.
PC Freeman said the aim was not simply to penalise motorists but to change behaviour.
He said: “In an ideal world, we don’t want to pull anyone over. Our priority is to engage, explain and educate, and only if necessary, enforce.
“We want motorists to take personal responsibility to ensure the load they are carrying is safe and secure, before they set off on their journey.
“This should come as second nature – much like putting on your seatbelt every time you get in your vehicle – and should only take a matter of minutes.
“Those vital few minutes could be the difference in preventing death and serious injury on our roads.”
Maria added: “On top of any financial penalty or prison sentence, you need to live with that every day for the rest of your life, that you’ve killed somebody.
“All the things they had to look forward to and the difference they were going to make to other people’s lives, that’s now ended, none of it is going to happen.”
