An interesting case if only for the level of fine - seems a bit harsh given it's a LA.

https://www.shponline.co.uk/nottingham-city-council-fined/?cid=%3FCID%3Dema-Newsletter_SHP%20Plus%20Weekly-21st%20April%202017-SHP%20Daily-%C2%A3200%2C000%20fine%20for%20Essex%20gas%20firm-

It does seem an excessive fine. I would guess that the HSE would go for this under the auspices of being in the public interest, although to levy such a huge fine on a local authority that is probably already struggling to balance the books seems to me to go against public interest. Similar thoughts occur with cases involving the NHS, and there have been some considerable fines against them that are bound to impact on services somewhere down the line.

I can sympathise with the concerns about the HSE determining to go for an organisation, and their choices are sometimes difficult to understand. Once this decision has been made, how many organisations could hold up to the detailed scrutiny of documentation and have no deficiences found? It's a bit like a quality audit - if you are determined to find fault, you will succeed.

Shocking fine for some bruising. 

However, if you consider that the Council in question (well, all Councils actually) are doing this work all the time, interacting with the public in the streets, in parks, in town centres, in the countryside and then you consider the potential number of accidents that could be had through their work, you look at this disabled man and question whether this is the level of attention they give to all their projects.  Did the HSE perhaps investigate all their works and find a lot of shortcomings which, but for the grace of God, could have caused multiple fatalities.

I think that the press only reports what it wants to report and everything has come down to this one incident but we all know that when the HSE come in they want to see everything about the accident and also how similar works are controlled throughout the business unit.  If the council was unable to show any better practices than this, then this could easily account for the fine.

Shockingly large on the face of it, but perhaps this accident was the tip of the iceberg?  Perhaps it wasn't, but this is something we cannot tell from the news article.

I disagree.

The fine should relate to the seriousness of the offence, not the outcome.

Also why should LAs have a different "law" to those of us working in the private sector. IMHO they have had it too easy for too long.

What should have happened was the LA CEO should have been made to stand in the dock throughout the trial. 

This is pure speculation but if this LA is like most; sometime in the past 5 years there has been significant cutback in their competent H&S staff. NCC now need to review who authorised those cutbacks and sack them.  

Edited by user 25 April 2017 11:10:34(UTC)  | Reason: typo

Whilst I agree that penalties should reflect the seriousness of the offence, this is understandable for private companies, where profits will be hit. However, for public bodies providing services to the public, it makes little sense to me to impose huge fines that will inevitably impact on the people they provide services for. There has to be a better way, and perhaps personal, rather than corporate, responsibility should be looked at. Just a thought.

Some confusion on the www as to whether this is County or City Council.

"Public Interest" considerations determine whether or not the case is brought to Court, not the level of punishment.

I understand that new sentencing guidelines consider turnover. On that basis, the fine is not so huge.

Yes it is public money, but what is the alternative? A two-tier system where Government Agencies, NHS, LAs etc. are shown leniency? That surely is wrong. HSE look to those agencies (due to the resources at thier disposal) to set and lead by example to other contractors.

I guess we have to wait on a transcript to see if the cumulative counts justify the level of fine (the Court obviously thought so).

As others say, I do hope that "heads rolled" on the basis that all that happened (including the Court outcome)was entirely preventable.

Only slightly off topic.....Where does the money from the fines go?  

This may be something I should know the answer to, but since I don't I thought I'd ask.

Thanks,

Sam

Thanks Brian.  

I assume its not ringfinced for use in promoting/improving H&S standards :-(

Unfortunately if you refer to the sentencing council guidelines then the details which I can see would class the degree of culpability as high and the harm category as 2 or 3. For a Council the turnover or equivalent will fall into the Large Organisation category and fines range from £250,000 to £2.9m. It would suggest that the court viewed this with harm category 2 which has a staring point of £1.1m and will be adjusted to include mitigating factors or aggressive factors.

This is a consequence of the sentencing guidelines changing in that large public bodies such as councils and NHS trusts etc. are liable to have larger fines should they be convicted. It would have been interesting if they had not pleaded guilty as there is little to gain from pleading guilty now in these instances unless you have insufficient evidence to mount a defence.

The courts are not concerned with where the money goes or the fact that this will affect services although for NHS organisations the level of fine must not impact on patient care (so they can pay it off in yearly installments). This level of fine (and higher) is likely to be the "norm" soon.

Edited by user 25 April 2017 14:14:06(UTC)  | Reason: Spelling

I can understand the conundrum with allowing non-profit making organisation a lesser fine than a profit-making organisation, but this has always been the case. I can recall British Rail with the Clapham Junction train crash where the Judge reduced the fine so at not to effect public services and more recently the Barrow-in-Furness legionella case where the Council was given a 90% reduction in the fine.

The SCG states: 'Where the fine will fall on public or charitable bodies, the fine should normally be substantially reduced if the offending organisation is able to demonstrate the proposed fine would have a significant impact on the provision of its services.' A million pound will go a long to ensure proper care is given to the elderly.

As for making Local Authorities more responsible and senior managers more accountable - I'm all for that. The problem is it will just not happen, at least, not in my working life time. Senior managers will just walk away and blame someone else and still keep their fat pay cheques.

We do not need prosecutions of managers, they just need to be held accountable by their employers just like out here in the real world.

To be fair even in private industry some managers are teflon coated. I have lost count how many times managers, even senior managers, have not followed the correct process for health and safety and not got more than a slap on the wrist. Yet, if it was an operative they would probably have been dismissed. Indeed some years ago a PM on a project told me he wanted to bring in a red/yellow card system for h&s violations. 'Great' I responded, as long as it applies to ALL supervisors and managers working on the project...never heard anymore about it.

Low hanging fruit is the easy to pick.