A chemist working for the British military who died in a laboratory explosion in 2002 might have survived if not for serious safety failings by his employer. However the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) will not face prosecution over the death.

Terry Jupp was working on improvised explosives for the DSTL in August 2002 when his experimental mixture ignited. He died later in hospital.

The UK’s Health and Safety Executive (HSE) said yesterday that evidence unearthed by its investigation would have presented a “realistic prospect” of conviction if the laboratory were not part of the Ministry of Defence and therefore immune from prosecution by the executive.

“Terry Jupp died needlessly,” said Susan MacKenzie of the HSE in a statement. “Even at the time of the incident, DSTL had well documented safety procedures, which, had they been followed fully, would have prevented or considerably reduced the severity of the incident.”

According to the HSE, researchers at DSTL were working without the protection of a screen and without personal protective equipment. Other health and safety failing identified include “inadequate or poorly followed” risk assessments for a set of experiments that by their nature were a serious explosion risk.

According to reports from the inquest into Jupp’s death, he was asked to mix readily available ingredients into a potential bomb. He was asked to make up 10kg of the mix, a huge amount of explosive material that academic or industrial chemists would require specialised protective equipment to handle.

HSE imposed the maximum enforcement action it could bring: a Crown Censure officially recording a failure to meet legal safety standards. This has been accepted by DSTL.