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Better a financial ouch than an electrical one any day.
One of the problems is that,if it's a fairly large operation, ~£16k may be relative peanuts, rather than a significant 'financial ouch'. One assumes/hopes that if they fail to comply with the Prohibition Notices, the consequences would then become much more severe/serious.
Kind Regards, John
That's a bit unkind John!
Actually one should hope that they see the error of their ways and make their wiring safe.
Actually one should hope that they see the error of their ways and make their wiring safe.
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The court will presumably have been aware as to whether they 'saw the error of their ways and made their wiring safe' during the nearly 15 months interval between the HSE identifying the problems and the matter getting to court.
Kind Regards, John
Perhaps they were John. What's your point?
According to HSE's enforcement action database, the prosecution resulted from a non-compliance with an Improvement Notice.
As I suspected - so, contrary to your hopes, it would appear that the company did not "see the error of their ways and make their wiring safe" when the problems were brought to their attention by the HSE.
Kind Regards, John
Not really, since one wouldn't expect anything that happened after the prosecution had been started to have had any bearing on the court's decision.
Hmmm...
(a) You said that the prosecution only started after they had failed to 'see the error of their ways' and respond satisfactorily to the Improvement Notice, and...
(b) In any event, although things that had happened after the prosecution started should not effect the court's verdict, it might well influence the sentence. Had the company satisfactorily rectified the problems during that period, one would expect the defence to introduce that information in mitagation of the sentence, whilst the absence of any such information could lead the court to be inclined to impose more severe penalties.
Kind Regards, John
The last couple of posts are out of synch, but here's an extract from another site: "After serving three Prohibition Notices on Techplas during its investigation, the HSE eventually took the firm to court, where it pleaded guilty to breaching Regulation 4 of the Electricity at Work Regulations 1989 and was fined £10,000 and ordered to pay almost £6,000 in costs.
Its fate may serve as a useful reminder to other companies that failure to deal with electrical systems and protect staff from the threats they pose can lead to a serious punishment."
The impact of the fine and other costs on the company concerned is perhaps less important than the impression made on other companies.
Ah, sorry, I'd misread your post at 3:09 pm, and thought you were referring to the cost of lost production due to the prohibition. I can't tell how long was allowed between the issue of the notices and the decision to prosecute, but I'm told that is usually a few weeks.
Its fate may serve as a useful reminder to other companies that failure to deal with electrical systems and protect staff from the threats they pose can lead to a serious punishment."
The impact of the fine and other costs on the company concerned is perhaps less important than the impression made on other companies.
Ah, sorry, I'd misread your post at 3:09 pm, and thought you were referring to the cost of lost production due to the prohibition. I can't tell how long was allowed between the issue of the notices and the decision to prosecute, but I'm told that is usually a few weeks.That's consistent with what you said previously.
That's what my initial post related to, but I'm not sure how strong an argument it is. If, as I suggested might be the case, the fine and other costs were (by virtue of their magnitude) of relatively little importantce to the company, then would they not be of equally little importance to other companies whom one might hope would be influenced by seeing the prosecution?
No, I was ignoring any costs due to lost production - because any such costs would be almost entirely their own fault. Had they responded immediately to the Prohibition Notices, lost production would presumably have been minimal. I was simply refering to the fact that (as above) the magnitude of fine+costs might not render them of any great importance to them.
Kind Regards, John
They should have been much more serious from Day 1.
Since we cannot realistically expect certainty of being caught to act as a real deterrent, we are left with the other stick of eye-watering penalties to use, and I do not see shy we should not use them.
If the directors knew that as soon as an inspector saw that breach they were personally facing a mandatory prison sentence then I can assure you that they would have been much more diligent.
£16K fine? Why not £160K? £1.6M? When we are talking about really big companies, why not fines into the hundreds of millions, or billions? Why not long periods of disqualification for the directors? Why not personal fines of £100Ks or millions on the directors?
Why not the possibility of life imprisonment for directors in cases of corporate manslaughter?
That is,of course, what I was implying in my first sentence - and I agree that (even if true) what I suggested in the second sentence is no cure for the inadequacy of the initial penalties.
Indeed, it gets worse, since we are now told that the prosecution was only brought (reaching court about 15 months after the initial discovery) because the company in question failed to comply with the Prohibition Notices. The implication is, I fear, that if they had remedied the breaches as soon as HSE identified them, they would probably not have been prosecuted at all, let alone convicted and given a severe sentence!
Kind Regards, John
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