For not following a RAMS?  I have never heard of such a thing going to court.  Wouldn't it be very widely reported if such a prosecution did happen?

I think that's still pretty rare.  I remember one of a forklift driver being prosecuted not so long ago - if you seach for that you may find a case.

Do the operatives actually write the RAMS?

Rhetorical question as in most cases RAMS are issued by company management to satisfy a request from the client or principal contractor. If they are lucky there will be an operatives briefing and possibly even reviews of suitability and pertinence during the project.

Whilst it is up to the operatives to follow the RAMS (I used to joke "if your RAMS say you have to wear a pink Tutu then as client I expect to see you in a pink Tutu") their suitability and sufficiency is down to the management.

As management are meant to ensure RAMS are followed it would be unlikely any operative would be prosecuted as presumably disciplinary procedures should have kicked in before any HSE involvement.

RAMS are written work instruction so any failure by the operative to comply with legitimate management instruction (a pink Tutu would not be legitimate) should trigger investigation with disciplinary outcomes up to and including dismissal.

In 30 years of working as an inspector i only ever once prosecuted an individual, and he was the sole trader of a small electrical company. Not following a RAMS is usually an immediate cause, as an inspector i was more interested in why the RAM had been ignored, what were the underlying and route causes. As an advisor i still find managers that think if they have written RAMS then they can pass on responsibility to the staff member and forget about their duty to monitor/manage etc.

Hi Tillie

Prosecutions of front line workers are VERY rare, partly as it is usually fairly easy for a regulatory Inspector to identify the underlying management failures.

In my 12 years working as an HSE Inspector, long long ago, I wrote the report that resulted in a foreman (so NOT the front line worker) being prosecuted. In effect he had got to site and had found that what was needed for the defined safe system of work was not in place, so he decided to change the way the work was to be done, without thinking through what the changes meant in terms of the safety risk. Fined £150 which at the time was probably about one week of HIS wages (and much higher proportionally than the fines being typically levied at that time on companies).

If you actually want numbers, then relatively easy to find as almost all cases will be taken under HSWA and if you ONLY want the front line workers then only one Section of HSWA is likely to come into play - Section 7.

So, whilst noting that you won't capture cases taken by the Office of Nuclear Regulaton, Office of Rail Regulatoin or by local authorities, if you go to the HSE website, you will find the prosecutions databases, one for "current" cases where convictions have been within the last 12 months (albeit not put on the database for about 9 weeks to allow for any appeals) and one for "history" cases concluded between 1 and 10 years ago.

Actually for individuals you can't go back that long as most cases will be "spent" after 5 years and the record taken down.

So, you need to check BOTH these databases and do it by ADVANCED search looking for "Breaches".

Then on the first menu you select "Act".

Next HSWA

Next "ADD" 

Next "Section"

Next Add

Next "=" and "7".

If the total over BOTH databases is more than 10 I would be surprised.

Might also find one or two cases under Manslaughter instead of HSWA, but these are much more likely to be people in a position of authority than front line workers.