Health & Safety Sentencing Guidelines Now in Place

The new and well-publicised sentencing guidelines for health and safety offences are now in place. These guidelines send a clear message to businesses which is that if they are found guilty of a health and safety offence, the best outcome is going to be a hefty fine.

Large companies in England and Wales could be fined around ten million pounds for the most serious breaches of health and safety law.

It is therefore vital that health and safety is a key business priority and that businesses take all sensible and possible precautions to protect their position in the event of an accident or prosecution.

Not only will large fines become the norm but companies will also have to deal with legal costs, as well as damages to reputation and staff moral.

What has also been less well publicised is that companies may also now face lower fine discounts if they plead guilty at a late stage. Indeed the Sentencing Council, which produces sentencing guidelines for courts in England and Wales, has put forward a proposal restricting the maximum one third sentence reduction to only those offenders who pleaded guilty at the first available opportunity.

This is once again a significant change to the status quo. This proposal is designed to bring forward the point at which offenders plead guilty in order to dispose of cases more quickly. Consultation on this proposal will run until 5 May 2016.

The new guidelines are currently now in place and apply to health and safety, corporate manslaughter, food safety and food hygiene cases.

For further advice on the new sentencing guidelines, please contact Nils O’Donoghue at NilsO@chadlaw.co.uk.