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Health and Safety Offences Act 2008 and Tougher Penalties

The Health and Safety Offences Act 2008 came into force on Friday, 16 January 2009. This new Act will increase penalties and provide courts with greater sentencing powers for those who break health and safety law.

This means that any accident which took place on or after 16 January 2009 will be susceptible to much larger fines than were previously available to the courts, and even the possibility of prison.

Health and safety Executive’s chief executive Geoffrey Podger said that the new penalties represented ‘a real deterrent’ to anyone who did not take health and safety with due seriousness.

However, he stressed that the Act does not introduce any new duties on employers or businesses, and that HSE will not be changing its approach to how it enforces safety law. “We will retain the important safeguards that ensure that our inspectors use their power sensibly and proportionately.” He said. “We will continue to target those who cut corners, put lives at risk and who gain commercial advantage over competitors by failing to comply with the law”.

The British Safety Council’s chief executive Brian Nimick welcomed the new Act, saying it should help ‘increase awareness of the need to adequately protect workers’, even in the face of our difficult economic times.

“Risks including accidents, illness and even death among the workforce could cost far more in the long term than the short term saving from cutting back on training,” he said.

The new Act makes three changes to the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974:

• The maximum fine which may be imposed in the lower (magistrates’) courts is now £20,000 for most health and safety offences.
• Imprisonment is now an option for more health and safety offences in both the lower and higher courts.
• Certain offences, which were previously triable only in the lower courts, can now be prosecuted in wither the lower or higher courts.

Safety lawyer Rachael Hirsted from DLA Piper, meanwhile, said that while there were no changes to existing legal duties, ‘business should continue to be vigilant’. “Given that there is a real possibility of two-year jail sentences being imposed which no changes accompanied by an unlimited fine, directors and individuals in management in particular, should be even more concerned to ensure that health and safety obligations are fulfilled,” she said.

Mar 2009

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