Occupational hazards - March 2021

HEALTH AND safety failures in workplaces can have catastrophic consequences, often leading to loss of life and causing devastation for families.

In the UK alone, 111 people lost their lives in a workplace accident between the start of April 2019 and the end of March 2020. The number of people who died from work-related ill health, while not being available, will have dwarfed this number.

What makes each case even more poignant is the fact they are avoidable. By having strong, robust measures to manage workplace risks, employers involved could have prevented these tragedies.

Of course, not all failures end in tragedy. Many more people are injured in workplace accidents, some of them suffering life-changing injuries, or suffer work-related ill health. Only recently, I read about a story of a delivery lorry driver who was left tetraplegic and needing 24-hour care when an incorrectly lifted pallet fell off a forklift truck and onto him.

On top of these, there are near misses, while poor safety and health practices from some organisations – by sheer luck – haven’t led to an incident.

It is right, then, that the courts take a very dim view of safety and health failures and that the sentences they give reflect that. 

On 1 February this year, it was five years since the new guidelines for courts were implemented, to assist them in sentencing this kind of offences. There had previously been little assistance. 

The 2016 guidelines, a 40-plus page document, provide a step-by-step guide for sentencing both companies and individuals for health and safety, and food, offences. This includes taking into account the turnover of the organisation, the level of culpability and the likelihood that the failing could lead to harm and how bad the harm could be. 

It is also not necessary for a fatality to have occurred for an organisation to be heavily fined, with the guidelines deeming that it is enough for a company’s health and safety failings to have caused injury, or put people at substantial risk of injury or death, to warrant a large financial penalty.

While you cannot put a value on human life, the level of fines now being handed out demonstrates and recognises society’s disapproval of serious corporate failures that lead to injury, illness and death. It reflects a desire to deter others from making the same errors and takes significant steps forward in aligning penalties for these offences with other regulatory breaches in the UK.

We believe a strong regulatory framework, enforced properly, is persuasive in convincing businesses to invest in health and safety. However, avoiding a large fine shouldn’t be the motivation businesses require to do so. Responsible employers put looking after their staff right at the top of their priority list. This in turn has significant benefits, including a hugely reduced incident and absence rate and thus more motivated and engaged staff, leading to business benefits such as greater productivity.

So, what impact have these guidelines had?

When you look at the level of fines given by the courts, there has been a significant increase. In 2015-16, the year before the guidelines came into effect, there were 644 fines given out with an average of £54,534. The following year, this rose to an average of £125,461 per fine from 542 successful prosecutions, leading to a high of £150,326 from 368 prosecutions in 2018-19.

The most recent year that figures available for, 2019-20, had an average of £110,062 from 325 cases. We cannot say for sure what caused this dip, but the fact the number of prosecutions nearly halved – from 644 to 325 – in four years suggests there has been a positive impact in that companies are striving to improve how they look after their staff.

But has this led to a reduction in the number of workplace accidents?

In the same time period, from 2015 to 2019, the number of fatalities remained at a similar level, with 147 deaths the year before the guidelines were introduced and 149 in 2018-19. 

There was a dip in 2019-20, to 111. This is likely to have been partly caused by the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, as organisations began working remotely, operating differently or not working at all before the end of this reporting period. However, the UK was on course for a lower figure before the pandemic hit. 

It is too early to say whether there will be a real downturn in the number of workplace fatalities and the figures will continue to be skewed by the ongoing pandemic.

What we do know, however, is that companies are being hit hard for failures. However, their drive to improve shouldn’t be purely motivated by avoiding fines; they have a duty to look after their staff and those responsible businesses who do so can reap the rewards in relation to employee, organizational and society benefits.

Ruth Wilkinson is head of health and safety at the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health. For more information, visit www.iosh.com