If there’s an accident in your workplace, from February 2016 fines for health and safety, food safety, and corporate manslaughter offences are going to hurt more than ever.Catering and construction businesses of all sizes are potentially affected by a new set of sentencing guidelines for courts. In a worst case scenario, when something goes seriously wrong in the kitchen or out on site, legal action can be taken. These things happen, especially if you’re running a large operation.New sentencing guidelines issued to courts concern health and safety, corporate manslaughter and food safety offences. Many construction or catering businesses can pay severe penalties if the right safeguards are not in place and an accident occurs, whether that’s a workplace fall, food poisoning or even a fatality.Such accidents and crimes are often without any intent, but the result of neglect, or a lack of professionalism. And occasionally there’s a level of ambiguity about where responsibility lies, what is preventable, and whether crimes are in fact crimes.
Considerably higher fines will be imposed for cases sentenced from February 1st 2016. Large organisations could face being hit with fines of up to £20 million if found guilty of corporate manslaughter.Managers with responsibility for health and safety compliance need to be fully up to speed with the figures involved and the potential financial impact on the business.
What Offences The Sentencing Guidelines Cover
- Health and safety offences – Organisations.
- Health and safety offences – Individuals.
- Corporate manslaughter.
- Food hygiene and food safety offences – Organisations.
- Food hygiene and food safety offences – Individuals.
These might even concern Atlantic Resource clients and candidates working in the care sector, if food hygiene is substandard, or care home residents are thought to have been neglected.Traditionally, guidelines only covered corporate manslaughter and health and safety offences which caused death. As well as being narrow in remit, there were doubts over their efficiency. Amongst these doubts was a broadly shared feeling that the methods of calculating fines were inadequate, a belief that sentencing was not consistent because health and safety cases were irregularly handled by courts, and that fines did not serve as a powerful enough deterrent or punishment for bigger companies.
[Read our blog post: Taking a stand on care work standards]The new guidelines may bring improved transparency across industries, together with more severe penalties. Whereas fines for corporate manslaughter offences used to start from £500,000 and increase infinitely into millions of pounds, fines for health and safety offence causing death were said to start from £100,000 and upwards. And in reality, fines often didn’t reach that minimum. But the new guidelines involve a detailed calculation.This calculation considers a company’s turnover rather than its profit, as turnover is judged to be the most important element of a company’s finances. Companies must provide full accounts to courts so financial statuses can be fully evaluated. If insufficient information is provided, this can be to the company’s detriment with higher fines imposed regardless.Court fines have a stated intention of having a “real economic impact” and sometimes even putting companies out of business. Like the cane as an old school classroom punishment for unruly children, they are meant to hurt.Naturally, all organisations across all sectors will try to avoid incidents like this. Arguably more important than the punishments, deterrents and disincentives after an unfortunate event, is a correct level due respect and attention paid to health and safety training and compliance. Health and safety is a subject often regarded with tossed eyebrows as unnecessary bureaucratic red tape, when it shouldn’t be.If you’re seeking new and responsible workers for your catering or construction business, get in touch.
