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Corporate Manslaughter – All Employers Should Read This!

6th April has come and gone but it heralded the new corporate manslaughter regime and many employers will have hardly given it a moment’s thought. I have recently run and been invited to speak at seminars highlighting the implications of this new Act.

My key point was that the legislation doesn’t require organisations to do anything new but the implications of failing to have a health and safety policy, risk assessments, risk control measures, training and education of managers and workers could result in serious legal and penal consequences in the event of a workplace fatality or other fatality caused by the organisation.

The Act puts corporate manslaughter onto a new footing, setting out a new statutory offence. In summary, an organisation is guilty of the offence if the way in which its activities are managed or organised causes a death which amounts to a gross breach of a relevant duty of care to the deceased. For the offence to bite, a substantial part of the breach must have been in the way activities were managed by senior management.

The offence addresses a shortcoming in the law since prior to the new offence, organisations could only be convicted of manslaughter if a “directing mind” at the top of the company (such as a director) was also personally liable. The reality of decision making in large organisations does not reflect this and the law therefore failed (dependant on your point of view) to provide proper accountability and justice for victims. The new offence allows an organisation’s liability to be assessed on a wider basis, providing a more effective means of accountability for very serious management failings across the organisation.

The new offence is intended to complement, not replace, other forms of accountability such as prosecutions under health and safety legislation and is specifically linked to existing health and safety requirements. The new offence will support well managed organisations by targeting those, which cut costs by taking unjustifiable risks with people’s safety.

We will be re-running our Corporate Manslaughter Seminar in early summer and anyone wishing to attend should contact Katharine Narici on kmn@dynesolicitors.co.uk.