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School fined as teacher knocked unconscious after ladder fall
Rank: Forum user 
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£2000 fine! Any ideas why so low. Is it purely because they essentially have a very low turnover compared to the recent Council fine of £1m for workers driving a vehicle into a disabled member of the public? Had this been a large business the fine would have been £1m or thereabouts. All this kind of sentencing achieves is telling small or nonprofit type organisations that their H&S does not have to be as good as a larger profit making one. Why? Is it that their employees are not as important or that they just do not have the funds to line the government’s coffers with! Whilst, I agree with the sentiment of the new guidelines, I think it is obvious that larger organisations are now being discriminated against unfairly. I am seeing a lot of lawyers getting rich in the same way as they did for years with personal injury claims because it is an easy win just to say that your RA is not up to scratch. A very easy judgment to make in hindsight a lot of the time by lawyers pawing over them for days on end. When are the HSE going to change the legislation and realise that it is not a significant issue not to have every conceivable risk documented within an RA, provided that you already have a procedure in place to control the hazard and the risk. Otherwise it just creates another gravy train for the legal fraternity. Its madness!
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Rank: Super forum user
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Whilst i see what you're getting at, i doubt very much that someone falling off a ladder would usually result in a £1m fine.
Do we actually know anything about the background of the case? There are numerous factors which would have been considered when deciding on the level of fine being imposed. Edited by user 28 April 2017 14:23:27(UTC)
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Rank: Super forum user 
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Almost at £900k http://press.hse.gov.uk/2016/volvo-sentenced-for-worker-fall/
Chris
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 1 user thanked chris42 for this useful post.
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Rank: Forum user
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There have been numerous £1m plus fines since Feb 2016 for the same kind of injuries and more notably much less
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Rank: Super forum user 
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An interesting response from someone commenting on the SHP posting of this story - might help explain the low fine?
"So the school gets it’s money from the public purse, the school is now
fined, which comes out of the school budget (public funds), ends up in
another part of the public purse. The school, as a consequence has less
money to pay staff and educate its pupils. Is this the economics of the
mad house?"
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Rank: Super forum user
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I'm not sure you can fairly compare the two W@H incidents, one is a school which will have limited resources and the other is a multi-billion pound global company who have the resources to ensure risks are properly managed.
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Rank: Super forum user
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Originally Posted by: Paul911  There have been numerous £1m plus fines since Feb 2016 for the same kind of injuries and more notably much less
Have there? I've searched the HSE prosecutions site and can't see any?
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School fined as teacher knocked unconscious after ladder fall
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