The ‘most dramatic change in health and safety enforcement since 1974’, with new sentencing guidelines for health and safety offences, are ‘set to revolutionise punishment for health and safety offences’, making ‘company’ compliance more critical than ever, member-based construction and building services association, BSRIA has warned.
The new guidelines will apply to all health and safety cases sentenced after 1 February 2016, regardless of when the offence was committed. BSRIA said: ‘Fines for the largest organisations in the sector following a fatality could be tens of millions of pounds.’
The guidelines set out the methodology magistrates and judges will have to adopt when sentencing, which cover:
• The harm the offence caused, with multiple deaths considered the most serious. When considering harm the court is entitled to consider ‘the potential for harm’, as well as actual harm.
• The culpability of the offender. Was their act or omission a mere oversight, a deliberate decision taken to save money, or somewhere in the middle?
• The offender’s ‘size’, measured via financial turnover. (In the construction sector, BSRIA points out, ‘turnover can be a deeply misleading measure of a company’s financial strength’).
Courts will be instructed to ensure fines are sufficiently substantial to have real economic impact on the defendant – to remind shareholders and managers of the need for a safe working environment.
BSRIA added: “The guidelines will also apply to individuals prosecuted for health and safety offences. The shocking consequence is that it will require very little fault on an individual’s part to result in a custodial sentence, which are currently rare.”
Julia Evans, BSRIA’s chief executive, said: “The UK has one of the best safety records globally. The unintended potential consequence of these guidelines could be global organisations suffering significant fines deciding to direct future global investment outside the UK, where the sentencing regime is far less rigorous.
“All workers are entitled to a safe place of work, but a balance must be struck – to ensure the punishment following a conviction is both just and proportionate having regard to all of the circumstances. The message is clear – re-double all efforts and checks to guarantee your operations are as safe as they can be.”
According to BSRIA, the ‘typical’ fine for the worst health and safety offences currently is between £250,000 and £500,000. It added: “Even for a small company, defined as having a turnover between £2 m and £10 m, future fines could be up to £1 m in the event of a fatality.”
