Corporate Manslaughter Act

Why has it come about?
Corporate Manslaughter is a crime that is committed by a company or organisation in relation to a work-related death. The Act will affect all companies and organisations regardless of size and prosecution can follow where a safety failure is the cause of work-related deaths.

Should a company fail to adequately protect their people, it could face a range of penalities from huge uncapped fines - proposed guidelines are between 2.5% and 10% of a company's average annual turnover, publicity orders - whereby the company has to advertise the fact it is a corporate killer, to prison sentences.

How it will affect you?
In practical terms, the essence of the Act is that a company or organisation becomes vulnerable to litigation, when it is aware of a risk and appropriate measures, but knowingly puts in place a system that is inadequate. Management failure is a focus of the Act therefore the actions of management are in the spotlight.

However, for organisations that already have fully integrated health and safety, the Act should not impose any additional requirements.

Background
Until April 2008, prosecutions of companies for corporate manslaughter relied on the successful identification of individual managers or directors as the 'controlling mind' of the organisation. However, under the new offence of corporate manslaughter it is the company or organisation that will be criminally liable for the most serious incidences of management failure that result in death.

An organisation will be guilty of the new offence of corporate manslaughter if the way in which any of its activities are managed or organised by its senior managers causes a person's death or amounts to a gross breach of the duty of care it owed to the deceased.