Business Defence seminar

John Roberts and Andrew Clarke hosted a business defence seminar on Monday 30th November at Maidstone United Football Club.

Magistrates now have unlimited sentencing powers in health & safety cases. Prosecutions of directors and individuals have gone up and restrictions on recovering defence costs can discourage from defending cases.

The seminar focused on the ever changing and complex areas of health & safety and regulatory affairs and covered a number of subjects including:

• The increase in criminalisation of health & safety offences
• New sentencing guidelines (including lessons from the recent environmental offences guideline and the Thames Water case)
• Sentencing under the new regime and recent examples
• The legal duties of directors and senior managers, corporate manslaughter and ‘management failings’.
• Management actions under the HSE/IOD guidance leading health & safety at work leadership action for board members
• Common law manslaughter

Partner John Roberts comments: “This is an area of law that every business owner and senior manager should be aware of, as it is ever changing. It is vital to not only be fully aware and compliant with the law, but also to have a plan in place of what to do in the event of incident which requires an organisation such as the Health and Safety Executive to become involved.”

More information on the new sentencing regime or health & safety management is available from John Roberts and Andrew Clarke who can be reached at j.roberts@gullands.com or a.clarke@gullands.com