Stop Press! – consultation launched on guidelines setting out approach to penalties for corporate manslaughter and health and safety offences which cause death

The Sentencing Guidelines Council (SGC) has just published its draft guideline on sentencing in corporate manslaughter and health and safety offences which cause death.

The SGC are again seeking views on the guideline before publishing a finalised version next year. You will remember that this matter has already been consulted upon so what is this consultation about?

Initially the Sentencing Advisory Panel proposed that fines should be imposed based on a percentage of a company’s annual turnover to ensure parity in the level of fines irrespective of the size of an organisation. However, having conducted further analysis on this approach, the SGC has concluded that this could inadvertently raise the risk of an unfair outcome.

Therefore, the guideline proposes a new approach where:

• Fines in corporate manslaughter cases may be measured in the millions of pounds and should seldom be below £500,000
• Fines in health and safety offences that cause death should seldom be less than £100,000 and may be measured in hundreds of thousands of pounds or more.

Due to this turnaround the Council are seeking views of stakeholders. To view the consultation material please see the Sentencing Guidelines Council website at www.sentencing-guidelines.gov.uk. The consultation finishes on 5 January 2010.

We will include more information on this issue in our next edition.