BRITAIN'S top policeman and his predecessor are facing a possible re-trial on charges of failing to ensure officers' safety after the death of a Hayes constable.

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir John Stevens, 59, and Lord Condon, 55, are accused of Health and Safety Act breaches after PC Kulwant Sidhu died in a rooftop fall. The 24-year-old was killed when he crashed through a glass skylight as he pursued a suspect in Twickenham in 1999.

PC Sidhu's colleague PC Mark Berwick, 41, suffered crushed vertebrae when he fell through a garage roof in Neasden in 2000. Both incidents occurred as the officers were chasing suspected burglars.

Scotland Yard boss Sir John was cleared last week of one charge of failing to ensure an officer's safety under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974. Lord Condon was found not guilty of two similar charges of failing to ensure an officer's safety under the same act. But both men now face a retrial on three outstanding counts in the case brought by the Health and Safety Executive after an Old Bailey jury failed to reach verdicts on Tuesday. The foreman told the judge the panel of 12 could not reach a decision after 13-and-a half hours of deliberation.

The two senior officers will now have to wait 28 days until a decision is made on whether to hold a retrial.

PC Sidhu tumbled through a glass panel while chasing two suspects in Colne Road, Twickenham, on October 24, 1999. The gang of burglars raided a recording studio nearby through a hole in a roof.

PC Sidhu scaled the outside of the building and found the two men on the roof with a stolen cardboard box.

He chased them and fell through an adjoining warehouse.

Officers at the scene did not know he had fallen until they were told by the suspects.

PC Berwick was based at Harlesden station on May 30, 2000, when two suspects were arrested in Gresham Road, Neasden, after breaking through the garage roof.

In the hunt for a third suspect, he climbed on to the roof which collapsed as he inched forward to look through the hole.

PC Berwick was off work for three months after the incident.