Directors being prosecuted by the HSE trebles

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You must be aware “Protecting the health and safety of employees who may be affected by your activities is an essential part of risk management and must be led by the board,” according to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). *

Do you have any understanding or knowledge of the 1^st February 2016 Sentencing guidelines… they do affect you as a director or business owner.

The table below is just a snapshot of companies who have been fined under the new sentencing guidelines:

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Incident	Industry	Fine
Broken Leg	Construction	£2,000,000 (2 Million)
Explosion	Oil and Gas	£1,650,000 (1.65 million)
Cut finger	Food and Beverage	£200,0000 (2 hundred thousand)
Health & Safety failings	Maintenance	Ten month suspended sentence
2 workers Injuries to hands	Steel workers	£3,650,000 (3.65 Million)
Head injury	Tyre maintenance	£150,000 (hundred & fifty thousand
Gas pressure valve failure	Oil and Gas	£3,000,000 (3 Million)

 

Since the introduction of the new sentencing guidelines, the guidelines are focused much more on risk as opposed to outcome and then are tariff based. So if your company turnover is high, and you have an incident, your fine will be even higher.

We are all protected right… as we have health and safety accreditations and certifications?

In order to find out how many companies actually operated Health Safety affiliations, we completed research into a number of companies fined in 2016. The results were astonishing…

81.7% of construction companies were accredited to one or more of the 24-assessment schemes when their incident occurred.
21.9% in the last 5 years had received awards for their good work in health and safety.
10.9% of companies had no affiliations or accreditations to any scheme.

The common perception is that these SSIP schemes we are made to associate with, costing thousands per year actually create H&S compliance.

 

Let me state very clearly, this a myth

The 24 registered members of the SSIP (Safe System in procurement) are part of a membership or umbrella body for assessment schemes, with the common aim of reducing both duplication and costs for both buyers and suppliers!!!

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So WHY were 81.7% of companies in 2016 actually fined, when they have obviously received audits and inspections?

I am not able to talk about every company, but as a Managing Director of a company who was at the time accredited / affiliated to 5 of the aforementioned schemes, I was one of the 81.7%, then on-top of the fine, I incurred huge financial losses and eventually multiple redundancies.

We seem to loose sight that the external audits are mainly aimed at checking companies’ procedures, standards and operational paperwork.

In my experience and equal to other directors I have spoke with, the auditors never speak with the workers, no audits take the time to watch workers working, watch the policies in action, review the procedures in a working environment.

This maybe due to the time the auditor has in your workplace, it maybe that they are not there to tell you what to do, but to simply check you do it, it may even be due to enforcing their own protection, as if they told you to do x, and you did x, then they are liable.

 

I do not wish for you to read this article and think fully that the government has created the problem, they simply operate within their known boundaries and do what they feel is the best practice for all industry to follow.

Legislation isn’t complicated and companies do not wish to be non compliant, its simply they don’t know how to be compliant and think be allowing others to tell them all their policies are in order is enough.

So in closing, company directors and business owners cannot continue to operate on the belief they are protected and that they really do everything practicably possible to protect their staff, and ignorance is not bliss… its ignorance

Don’t let your company be the next; it’s cheaper to PLAN than to react.

 

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To find out how Safety PAL can help your company prevent accidents and protect you from liability, request a free demo today at yoursafetypal.com

* The Institute of Directors and the Health and Safety Executive: Leading Health and Safety at Work
** Source: http://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/enforcement.htm

Useful Documents

http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/indg417.pdf
http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/books/hsg65.htm
https://www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk/about-sentencing/about-guidelines/