Talking Point: Judgement day for health and safety
The past couple of weeks have seen a whirlwind of debate in the health and safety sector, with the first conviction and fine made under the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act of a Gloucestershire company called Cotswold Geotechnical and then National Rail’s guilty plea to the charges brought against it for the Potters Bar rail crash providing plenty of food for thought.
Safety consultants need to be registered. Manslaughter charges have now been brought following the Warwickshire fire deaths.
These developments have had a national impact but with recent figures released from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) showing that the number of workplace deaths in the East Midlands has risen since last year, they also have a particular regional resonance.
The East Midlands business community is particularly vulnerable to health and safety concerns since such a large proportion of its economy comes from sectors such as manufacturing or agriculture, where the operation of heavy machinery increases employees’ risk of injury. Potters Bar and the Geotechnical prosecutions for health and safety breaches will now focus the minds of owners and managers in the region on their health and safety policies.
As the conviction and subsequent fine levied against Cotswold Geotechnical Holdings demonstrates, SMEs are not exempt from being pursued under the Corporate Manslaughter Act. This is perhaps ironic when we consider that the Act was initially introduced to target large multi-national companies that hadn’t been touched by previous manslaughter laws, such as Network Rail over fatal accidents like Potters Bar.
However, the Act was drafted so widely that it has brought smaller companies like Cotswold Geotechnical Holdings within its remit. Likewise, it seems incongruous that the Act was drafted to allow a prosecutor to aggregate many separate elements of a corporate failure across a large company into one charge of corporate manslaughter and yet the first corporate body convicted under it is a small business that comprises only one statutory director and only eight employees – it doesn’t really have the size to help us a lot as to who is a ‘senior manager’ and who isn’t.
The case should certainly be a wake up call for smaller companies in the East Midlands to scrutinise their health and safety measures; the Act can and will lead to convictions for virtually any company or corporate body, not just those big names that have previously been seen as ‘escaping’ prosecution. If they outsource safety management they now need to check that their consultant is ‘competent’ and registered as such.
The stakes are higher than they have ever been before; if companies are prosecuted and receive an unlimited fine at the end of it, that will pose a significant risk to their profitability and could even threaten to put some of them out of business altogether.
An economic upturn in some of the main industries in the East Midlands is encouraging for the whole business community; it would be disappointing if that growth were stalled by companies plunged into administration because of hefty fines under the Corporate Manslaughter Act.
Chris Green is lead partner of the Midlands regulatory team at law firm Weightmans LLP, working out of the firm’s Leicester and Birmingham offices.
