Offences and Penalties Report 2003/2004
Foreword
This year’s HSE Offences and Penalties Report has taken on a new look, to make it easier to read and to put enforcement action into the wider picture. The report continues to provide detailed information on enforcement activity in the past year.
We again name all those convicted of health and safety offences in the previous year. The offenders’ database aims to inform all those concerned with a company’s health and safety performance, to help them bring about pressure for improvement. But, we also give examples of how business and HSE work well together, to protect employees and others from being made ill, being injured or killed by their work, by ensuring risks are properly controlled. This is our single goal.
To help bring home the traumatic and devastating effects that can come from failures in health and safety management, we have included some examples of people talking about how health and safety incidents have affected them personally. I am grateful for their assistance - it helps us to draw attention to the need to protect others from similar experiences.
I want to make it clear that as an organisation we are committed to effective enforcement; serious breaches will get a tough response. We will not shy from issuing enforcement notices or prosecuting where necessary. Nevertheless, our approach to health and safety enforcement is fair. This means that, in particular, enforcement is proportionate in relation to the risk.
Moreover, sensible health and safety is about managing risks, not eliminating them. To help employers do this, we offer much guidance and advice. But enforcement remains a necessary and powerful tool in ensuring that employers comply with the law.
New research by HSE is helping us look into why people comply with health and safety law. Our questionnaire was sent to businesses of all sizes, and others with an interest, including trade unions and insurers.
We have found that one of the main factors that motivate employers to ensure good health and safety standards is the business benefits. Ninety per cent of more than 1700 people who responded agreed or strongly agreed that health and safety is important for staff productivity and morale.
The respondents felt that their reputation is very important. Eighty six per cent agreed or strongly agreed that damage to their reputation could cause them to lose business, with 82% feeling that they must comply with health and safety regulations to protect their reputation.
Eighty per cent said that they check their own health and safety standards if they hear about a notice or prosecution against a similar organisation; and 68% felt that enforcement action would greatly disrupt their business. But, only 45% of respondents said that they would be more likely to act on the advice of a regulator because they have enforcement powers.
We will know more when we publish our full findings in the New Year. For now, I believe this means the employers we work with are alert to how effective health and safety risk management can protect their reputations and their workers. I see businesses who are mostly keen to learn from the mistakes of others, keen to avoid serious incidents and the inevitable disruption they bring. But, businesses also expect fair, reasoned and sensible enforcement, which is the standard we strive to achieve. As I said above, we will continue to take such enforcement action when it is needed.
Timothy Walker
Director General
In this report
- Key enforcement figures
- Strategy and enforcement
- Our enforcement approach
- Personal Stories
- Proportionality
- Investigation
- Prosecutions
- Recent prosecutions
- Penalties
- Targeting
- The business benefits of good health and safety
- Providing Accessible Advice and Support
- HSE prosecution and notices databases
Key enforcement figures
- This year, 982 cases were prosecuted. This is around the level of recent years.
- The total number of notices issued by HSE has decreased from 13,324 to 11,295. This is lower than last year, but about the same as previous years. Last year the number of notices issued was exceptional. There was a marked increase in the number of improvement notices issued in construction and agriculture. This was a result of the extra attention HSE inspectors were paying to these priority areas, and this has continued. This year’s overall number of notices has returned to the levels seen in previous years. This is because fewer notices were issued in the services and manufacturing sectors.
- The average fine per case prosecuted by HSE's Field Operations Directorate has increased from £8,846 in 2002/03 to £13,947 in 2003/2004. The average fine per case prosecuted by all of HSE's directorates has risen from £9,395 in 2002/2003 to £14,702 in 2003/2004;
- Each case may involve prosecution for more than one offence. The average fine per offence prosecuted has risen from £6,251 in 2002/03 to £9,858 in 2003/04.
- 89% of cases prosecuted lead to a conviction.
- HSE prosecuted a total of 17 directors and managers in 2003/04 and 11 of these were convicted.
- The largest fine in 2003/04 was £700,000 in a case where an explosion under a playing field could have endangered many lives. Fortunately, it occurred in the early hours of the morning, when the area wasn’t being used.
Strategy and enforcement
“Our vision is to gain recognition of health and safety as cornerstone of a civilised society and, with that, to achieve a record of workplace health and safety that leads the world.”
To do this, we will:
- develop closer partnerships;
- help people to benefit from effective health and safety management and a sensible health and safety culture;
- focus on our core business and the right interventions where we are best placed to reduce workplace injury and ill health;
- communicate the vision.
Enforcement is an effective way to improve the health and safety of workplaces and will remain an important part of our work. The HSC strategy reflects the Commission’s view that prevention is better than cure and it is therefore important to balance enforcement with our other activities. We will continue to offer advice to duty holders on how best to manage health and safety risks, and how to comply with the law. We also produce much guidance material to help employers and employees manage health and safety risks. We made a statement in September 2004 explaining how we intend to improve access to that advice and support.
HSE is constantly looking to strike a balance between the resources put into prevention on the one hand and into responding to incidents on the other. But, prevention must take priority to reduce incidents of work related death, injury and ill health.
One way we work to prevent harm is through Safety Awareness Days for farmers.
Our enforcement approach
Sensible health and safety is about managing risks, not eliminating them. We follow the principles for good enforcement set out in the Enforcement Concordat. In short, this means that:
- we are proportionate in the way we make people comply with the law;
- we are consistent;
- we target our enforcement action on the greatest risk;
- we are transparent in the way we operate and about what people can expect from us; and
- we are accountable for our actions.
The HSE Enforcement Policy Statement [89KB] explains the general principles and approach which HSC expects enforcing authorities (mainly HSE and local authorities) to follow. Proportionality is fundamental to our approach.
Proportionality in applying the law is about relating enforcement action to the seriousness of the risk or the breach of the law. The most serious offences and highest risks will attract the firmest enforcement.
Failures to manage risks to health and safety can cause people serious harm.
Personal Stories
The following video extracts tell some people’s stories:
- Lee Reed - Avoid danger from hoists by having proper training
- Susan Smith - Shortcuts can cause fatal accidents
- Alison Hockaday - How a wet floor changed her life
- Janet Wheeler - Take breaks from repetitive works to avoid RSI
- Bernadette Bryne - Reversing vehicle causes fatal accident
- Peter Dowdles - Insist on safety nets when working at heights
- Difficulties viewing the case studies?
- Examples of health and safety prosecutions
Proportionality
There are a wide range of tools and techniques available to our inspectors to ensure that duty holders comply with health and safety law. These range from informal advice, to improvement and prohibition notices, to prosecution. But inspection remains an important element of our overall approach.
We work closely with industry as well to achieve good health and safety management. More information can be found in our fairgrounds example.
Inspections give duty holders the opportunity to seek advice from an inspector face to face. Inspectors maintain a proportionate approach to any breaches they may find during an inspection. If the breach is less serious, the inspector will advise the duty holder how best to put the problem right, and explain how the duty holder is not complying with the law. The inspector will confirm this advice in writing if the duty holder asks, and make clear the difference between legal requirements and good practice.
Sometimes we carry out a blitz of inspections. More information can be found in our construction example.
Where the breach of the law is more serious, the inspector may serve a notice on the duty holder. The inspector can issue:
an improvement notice, which requires employers to take remedial action on specific breaches of the law within a specified time limit;
a prohibition notice, which is issued in cases where the inspector believes that a work activity involves or will involve a risk of serious personal injury. Prohibition notices can take two forms:
- immediate prohibition notices, which stop a work activity immediately until a risk is dealt with; and
- deferred prohibition notices, which stop a work activity within a specified time limit.
When an inspector issues a notice, it is an opportunity for the employer to put things right and prevent future incidents, which would be bad for people and bad for business. HSE inspectors often work closely with the employer, whether in the public or private sector. More information can be found in our NHS example.
A notice sets out in writing that, in the inspector’s opinion, an offence has been committed, and sets a date by which the duty holder must rectify the situation. The inspector also produces a schedule explaining what (in the inspector’s opinion) the duty holder must do to comply with the notice. If the duty holder fails to comply with the notice, the inspector can take further legal action and may prosecute.
HSE make the names of all those served a notice, or convicted of a health and safety offence publicly available in our enforcement databases. We see a demand for this information from businesses, trade unions, insurers, and others. By informing all those concerned with a company’s health and safety performance, we aim to help them bring about pressure for improvement.
Last year HSE:
- made about 206,000 regulatory contacts;
- investigated nearly 28,000 incidents and complaints;
- issued 11, 295 improvement and prohibition notices;
- brought 982 prosecution cases.
This shows proportionality in action. More information on enforcement figures can be found in the statistics section.
Investigation
To maintain a proportionate response, HSE concentrates its efforts on the most serious incidents. It is neither possible nor necessary for the purposes of prevention to investigate every incident of non-compliance discovered during an inspection, nor every incident that is reported to HSE.
Where a breach of the law has led to a work-related death which is reportable to HSE, we will always investigate, unless there is good reason not to. For example the police may consider the death to be a suicide, in which casethe reasons for not investigating will be recorded.
Work Related Deaths: A Protocol for Liaison (WRDP) helps investigators and their legal advisers work towards a sound and timely decision about whether or not to prosecute. HSE, The Local Government Association, The British Transport Police, The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and The Association of Chief Police Officers (England and Wales) all work together under the protocol. A National Liaison Committee oversees its working. The Committee produced guidance for the police and health and safety investigators to support coordination in investigations.
Following a work-related death the police will usually be the first on the scene, and will consider whether a possible manslaughter offence needs to be investigated, ie whether gross negligence has caused the death. The police will work closely with the other authorities involved.
If the circumstances suggest the possibility of a manslaughter offence, the police will take the lead in the joint investigation. If not, HSE or the local authority will lead with a health and safety investigation.
Between, April 1992 and March 2003, a total of 253 possible manslaughter cases were referred to the CPS. The CPS brought prosecutions for manslaughter in 69 cases, 18 of which have resulted in convictions.
In deciding whether to investigate serious non-fatal incidents, HSE inspectors consider:
- the severity and scale of potential or actual harm;
- the seriousness of any potential breach of the law;
- their knowledge of the duty holder’s past health and safety performance;
- enforcement priorities;
- the practicality of achieving results; and;
- the wider relevance of the event, including serious public concern.
HSE has detailed criteria for deciding whether to investigate.
An investigation aims to find out:
- the cause of the incident;
- whether action has been, or needs to be, taken to prevent another incident from happening, and to make sure the law is no longer being broken;
- lessons to be learnt; and
- what action should be taken by HSE to make sure lessons are learnt, eg issuing a notice.
Prosecution
The Health and Safety Commission’s Enforcement Policy Statement sets out the circumstances in which HSC considers it is normally in the public interest to prosecute. We only expect employers to do what is sensible. Sensible health and safety is about managing risks, not eliminating them. Prosecution is normally reserved for the most serious breaches. This is the proportionate approach HSC expects.
In England and Wales, inspector’s decisions on whether to prosecute for any health and safety offence also take account of the Code for Crown Prosecutors, which requires that:
- there is sufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction; and
- the prosecution is in the public interest.
In Scotland, the Procurator Fiscal decides whether to bring a prosecution. This may follow a recommendation by HSE. However, the Procurator Fiscal may investigate the circumstances and institute proceedings independently. HSE must use discretion in deciding whether to report to the Procurator Fiscal with a view to prosecution. The Crown Office and the Procurator Fiscal Service endorse the HSC Enforcement Policy Statement, and have acknowledged that action on reports of offences submitted to them should reflect the HSC approach.
In Scotland, before prosecutions can be brought, the Procurator Fiscal will also need to be satisfied that there is sufficient evidence and that prosecution is in the public interest. So, in Scotland the decision whether or not to prosecute is one for prosecutors rather than enforcing authorities. The enforcing authority’s views will, however, be taken into account.
HSE make the names of all those served a notice, or convicted of a health and safety offence in Great Britain publicly available in our Enforcement Databases.
Recent examples of work-related prosecutions
A four-year old boy was killed when he came into contact with a live conductor rail at a railway station. He got onto the track through a fenced yard alongside the station. The yard’s gates had been left permanently open for many years. Both the infrastructure controller and the railway maintenance contractor (who had previously occupied the yard) pleaded guilty to breaches of Section 3 of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 for failing to ensure the safety of the child. In addition, the infrastructure controller was charged under specific legislation relating to fencing of the railway. The infrastructure controller and the contractor were each fined £150,000 in the Crown Court. Costs of £33,000 were awarded to HSE.
Following a Crown Prosecution Service prosecution, a Crown Court sentenced a landlord to five years in prison and his assistant to three years in prison following the deaths of two tenants from carbon monoxide poisoning. Both defendants had pleaded guilty to two counts of manslaughter at previous hearings. Health and safety charges were left on file. The defendants had removed a room-sealed gas fire which was not working, due to a flat battery and defective parts. They had replaced it with an open-flued gas fire. Four days later, the tenants went to sleep with the fire on and died in their beds from carbon monoxide poisoning. The local police, supported by HSE staff, investigated the deaths under Protocol on responding to work-related deaths.
HSE prosecuted an employee for failing to take reasonable care of the health and safety of another employee. An employee driving a fork-lift truck asked an employee with learning disabilities to sit on a pallet, to stabilise it. As the pallet was lifted, the load became unstable and threw the victim to the ground. The driver pleaded guilty and was fined £500 in the Magistrates Court.
HSE prosecuted a local council following the death of a nine-year old girl who was struck on the head by a propped-up section of gate which fell on her. The gate was poorly designed, installed and maintained and was bound to fail. The judge fined the council, who pleaded guilty to a charge under the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 section 3, £75,000 plus £11,000 costs. The case was heard in the Crown Court.
Penalties
Following a successful prosecution, the courts will decide what penalty to impose, if any. As well as fines the courts also have the power to imprison offenders for certain health and safety breaches. To date five people have been sent to prison for health and safety offences since January 1996; none in the last four years.
More detail on the maximum penalties for health and safety offences can be found at the back of the HSC Enforcement Policy Statement.
HSE believes that the current general level of fines does not properly reflect the seriousness of health and safety offences. However, it is up to the courts to decide appropriate fines.
Targeting
We target our actions on the activities with the most serious risks, or where the hazards are least well controlled. The action will be focused on the person best placed to manage the risk, whether that is the employer, manufacturer, supplier or the employee.
As the HSC: A strategy for workplace health and safety in Great Britain to 2010 and beyond explains, we must be clear about our enforcement priorities and target our actions to where they will be best placed to reduce workplace ill health, injury, and death.
HSC has set out Strategic Programmes to help focus attention where it is
needed most. Key areas include agriculture, construction and stress.
The business benefits of good health and safety
Protecting people’s health, lives and futures is the right thing to do. But, there are also economic benefits of good health and safety management.
As Bill Ronald, the Chief Executive of Uniq plc, a chilled foods producer, explains:
“The Uniq Board recognise that both the Group’s corporate performance and its value to stakeholders are affected by its occupational health and safety performance. It therefore requires the Managing Directors and all employees to demonstrate a positive approach to Health and Safety Issues.”
For more details on what Uniq plc have found, and other examples of how health and safety management is good for business, visit;
Providing accessible advice and support
In the Strategy we commit ourselves to developing easy access to advice and support without employers feeling worried about possible enforcement action.
As the first big step in this project we have published a Statement saying what we are doing on a range of issues and setting out the next stages of the work.
The statement sets out:
- the option of separating the enforcement and advisory functions and our intention to consider this in greater detail;
- how we are developing and improving our existing services, particularly where employers fear enforcement at the point of delivery;
- how we will share what we learn about providing accessible guidance with local authorities so they can continue to develop their respected role as providers of advice;
- how we will work with others to develop and improve other channels of advice and guidance.
We are looking at developing and improving our existing services. Our Internet services will be improved by, for example introducing advice forums in the form of ‘online communities’, dealing with specific issues. Also, the reach and scope of Infoline, our public enquiry contact centre, will be extended. This will become the main way in for those seeking advice and guidance, beyond that available from the our website.
We also have a project which will use innovative partnerships to deliver occupational health and safety support and advice on return to work issues.
HSE prosecution and notices databases
- Prosecutions database
Details of all prosecution cases resulting in a conviction and Crown censures taken by HSE since 1 April 1999, excluding any under appeal or withdrawn. - Crown
Censures
Details of all Crown censures issued between 1998/99 and 2003/04. - Notices database
Details of all enforcement notices including Crown notices issued since 1 April 2001 - excluding those under appeal or withdrawn. - List
of Convictions 2003/2004
A list of organisations and individuals convicted of health and safety offences.
Health and Safety Offences and Penalties 2003/2004 [467KB]
Enforcement Policy Statement [89KB]
HSE's statement on providing accessible advice and support [64KB]
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