Background

Recently, I mentioned on Twitter that we are teaming up with a Health & Safety consultant to offer those services to our clients.  After all, HR and Health and Safety are intrinsically linked.  I had a response from someone I tweet with quite ofthen who said something along the lines of "don't mistake Health and Safety for moral fortitude."  Intrigued, I asked him to explain and then asked if he'd consider writing a guest blog post on the subject.  This is the result (my twitter buddy has asked to remain anonymous).

In my last post, I talked about the first company to be prosecuted under the Corporate Manslaughter Act and how the fact that they are a small company hasn’t made any difference to their duty of care responsibilities. 

Late last week it was announced that the company had been found guilty and fined £385,000.  They can pay the fine back over a ten year period which means that it won’t put them out of business but still, paying out almost £40,000 per year for the next ten years is a significant sum.  According to one of the solicitors involved in the case, the magnitude of the fine is unprecedented but then again, this is the most serious criminal offence a company can be convicted of. 

I’m not usually one for watching the news for details of court cases.  It’s not as if the outcome won’t get reported and, where appropriate, any effect the ruling has on HR good practice.  There is one case that I’m currently watching with interest and that’s the first ever corporate manslaughter trial against a company (charges against the then-director were dropped due to his ill-health). 

So why am I watching this one so closely?  The company charged with corporate manslaughter and breaches of the Health & Safety at Work Act is a small company.  It’s not a huge corporation where employees are just numbers and where they have whole teams of people responsible for Health and Safety.  This is a small company but the Crown Prosecution Service have still deemed it necessary to lay charges against them.