This is justice with a hollow ring. The company held responsible for one of Britain's worst tower crane disasters in years has been fined £125,000 plus £264,000 costs.

But it will not pay out a penny.

After being convicted of two health and safety offences over the collapse that killed two workers and injured a third, WD Bennett's Plant & Services Ltd went into administration.

Meanwhile, boss Edward Seager has set up shop again with a new crane company.

In 2005 his old firm provided two cranes for work on Durrington High School, near Worthing, West Sussex through subsidiary Eurolift (Tower Cranes) Ltd.

At the end of the job, Stephen Boatman and Gary Miles climbed 105ft to start dismantling one of the crane's jibs. David Smith helped them, despite having no training.

Witnesses heard sounds like "pistol shots" as bolts Smith had loosened gave way and the crane collapsed on to the school sports hall, which workers had just left after a tea break.

Dad-of-two Boatman, 45, and Miles, 37, were thrown to the ground and died. Smith, 55, was left hanging on the crane with broken bones but survived.

This was a "disaster waiting to happen", according to the Health and Safety Executive's prosecuting counsel Nigel Lithman.

He told Chichester crown court a "management vacuum" had been created because health and safety manager at Eurolift, Tony Ferris, was off sick that day.

Smith described his job as a "dogsbody or gofer". Eurolift pleaded guilty to two health and safety offences, but parent firm WD Bennett denied them. It was convicted in March but went into administration soon after.

According to the most recent compa-naccounts, WD Bennett, of Sharpness, Glos, made profits after tax of £1.75million during the three years following the deaths.

The three directors - Seager, 46, his wife Karen and Leslie Harper - paid themselves £383,000.

But the firm was bitten by the recession last year and went bust owing nearly £10m. Eurolift has also gone bust, with Seager's firms owing £440,000 to the taxpayer in unpaid fines and costs. But he's back in business again as Bennett's Cranes Ltd, after snapping up many of his old firm's assets.

Seager told us he had a good accident record, but admitted there was no written risk assessment given to the crew.

"I'm absolutely seething at what's gone on," said Stephen's mum Margaret Hartley, 60.

The database will initially include only those three cities, though other areas -- including Dallas, California, New Jersey, Connecticut and Ontario, Canada -- have also expressed interest in the program and may join it later.

The Commissioner of the New York City Buildings Department hailed the database as a major step toward a national tower crane tracking system.

The system will track the number of cranes active in a jurisdiction, the address of the project where the crane is in use, the crane's owner, plus the crane's make, model, year and serial number, as well as the date it was erected on the site, its maximum height and the date it is dismantled.

Officials say the system will be updated quarterly and will also include important details about manufacturer recalls, equipment failures, inspection records, operational failures and construction site accidents and other incidents involving cranes.

Critics say the system will lack crucial information on crane accidents; they claim that accidents usually are caused by operator error, improper use, poor operation training or inadequate preventative maintenance of the machines -- statistics this database will not track.