May 2017 Legal Update:
This legal update is going to look at the sentencing guidelines for Judges just over 12 months from them coming into force and how they have dramatically changed the level of penalties.The major changes are the following, when judges decide the level of punishment and fines:
- Fines are based on the level of culpability.
- The actual consequence of the incident is not a deciding factor anymore, it is the possible consequence, which is.
- The number of people who were exposed to the risk is also a major factor.
- Now financial turnover of the organisation is a factor in deciding levels of fines not profit.
Haulage Company Fined Nearly £500,000 for Fatal Injury.
ATE Truck and Trailer sales limited were fined £475,000 with £20,000 in court costs.
Click on this link to see details.
This case is interesting from a legal perspective. As experts in the business they refurbish and sell HGV trailers and vehicles, so you expect the activity, which caused the fatality, to be their bread and butter. The individual involved clearly didn't understand the risks associated with the task that he was completing. It is always the responsibility of the company to spell the risks out and make sure any safe working practices developed over the years are adhered to. I would make an educated guess that the individual involved would have been doing the task a number of times in the same way without being challenged.
Before the sentencing guidelines were changed in February 2016 an incident of a similar nature I estimate would have resulted in a fine of less the £100,000.
A North West manufacturing company has been fined after an employee was struck by a fork lift truck in Chester.
For more details click the link.
Liverpool Magistrates Court heard that Encirc Ltd, a producer of glass bottles for the drinks industry had failed to take effective measures to ensure its workers were correctly segregated from fork lift trucks.
An investigation by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) was launched after an employee collided with a fork lift truck on Ash Road, Elton, which resulted in him breaking his arm.
The inquiry, following the incident on 14 December 2015, also found that the clarity of segregation was well below the standards expected.
This incident has absolutely flabbergasted me. I have never seen a fine of the level for an incident which is not a fatality incident!
There are a number of reasons why the fine was so high:
- The company had a poor safety record and had been served a number of improvement notices by enforcing officers prior to the incident.
- One of the improvement notices was for poor pedestrian/ vehicle segregation in 2007.
- They had previously been fined £18,000 in October 2015 following an explosion on the same site.
- These factors would significantly increased the level of culpability and number of people exposed to the risk.
So a repeat of a non-compliance which has been previously identified and another serious incident, even if not directly connected, are aggravating factors and would have certainly been taken into account by the judge when imposing the sentence.
Certainly I feel that the sentence imposed by the judge from the old guidelines would have been around £100,000.