Written By Jack J Collins, Editor of AllAboutLaw

BLM announce shock health and safety fines rise

Written By Jack J Collins, Editor of AllAboutLaw

Risk and insurance firm BLM have announced that the average payout in a health and safety claim for 2016 has more than quadrupled in the past 12 months.

BLM's health and safety tracker showed that the average sum paid out is now almost a quarter of a million pounds, which is four times the average cost of 2015, where the sum was £69,500.

Whilst cases were down from 358 in 2015 to 292 in 2016, the amount that the average payout has gone up has meant that companies in the UK have parted with nearly £61 million over the course of the year, which is nearly 2.5 times more than the year before.

Research conducted by the insurance and risk law firm found that there were a total of 292 incidents recorded during 2016, with an average payout almost a quarter of a million pounds. This is four times the £69,500 average cost seen the previous year, where 358 cases were brought.

This follows a change in legislation made in February 2016, with new guidelines imposed for health and safety, food hygiene and corporate manslaughter offences. The court now considers culpability, seriousness and likelihood of harm and the size of a business and its turnover when imposing fines.

Fines for businesses with a turnover in excess of £50m can now reach up to £10m for health and safety offences, and corporate manslaughter fines could be as much as £20m. This new system has been implemented to improve the standards of compliance with health and safety legislation for larger organisations by imposing fines proportionate to the size of the business, rather than using a universal figure for all offences.

The significance of this change is highlighted in BLM’s figures, with 18 fines issued last year with a value of over £1m, compared with only two in 2015. This includes the high profile £5m fine issued to Alton Towers following the Smiler disaster, which remains the largest ever fine from a single incident.

Helen Devery, partner and head of health and safety at insurance and risk law firm BLM, said: “The new sentencing guidelines send a strong message to all businesses big or small: it is people and business critical to ensure that safety processes and systems are a board-level priority. The introduction of the risk of harm means that near misses will be reviewed and subject to potential prosecution so this has been a game-changing 12 months for the industry.”

BLM’s figures reveal that the construction sector was the most costly, racking up a bill of almost £14m. This was followed by manufacturing (£12m), Utilities (£8.4m), Leisure (£7.4m), Logistics and transport (£7.2m), Industrials (£3.9m) and Public Sector (£2.6m).

Helen Devery concluded: “Robust and proactive audit processes which interrogate and improve systems will be seen as best practice and at the heart of this is a commitment to effective risk assessment and training across all parts of the business.”

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