Posted By Jim Walker I was interested to read that Doncaster council have been fined fined £400,000 with £30,000 costs for “disgraceful disregard” of safety measures. In reality the innocent “ratepayers” have been fined. It would seem that blame was down to “slashed budgets”, if so are not councillors liable in the same way that company director are? I’ve always considered the “gamekeeper in the employ of the poacher” relationship that EHOs have to be rather strange. Can any of our EHO colleagues enlighten me? Has the senior EHO been sacked? Has he/she been thrown out of their professional body (IOSH?) If not why not? I believe this was actually the second death under very similar circumstances in the same council. What happened the first time? Did heads role (either employment or professional body).

Posted By Brian Dawson I am not an EHO but I think you are being a little hard on them. Why on earth do you think the Chief EHO at Doncaster should be disciplined? Most Chief EHOs would have no responsibility for Council internal H&S; they are responsible for enforcement. In some cases the Councils internal H&S adviser may be based in the EH department, but the position would be the same as any other H&S adviser. Of course it would be a different matter if the Chief EHO was also the manager responsible for the particular building (or indeed knew about the defective wiring but had done nothing about it). As for individuals being fined it is senior paid officials who are more likely to be in the frame. ie the Chief Exec and the other Directors and Chief Officers (these rather than elected Members are equivalent to private sector company directors). There was, of course, the successful prosecution (under Section 37) of the Director of Roads for Strathclyde Regional Council back in the 1970s. In my view it is possible, but unlikely, for an elected Member to be prosecuted (Section 36?) particularly as we move towards portfolio holders but I find it difficult to think of specific circumstances except exceptional acts of stupidity. One reason it is unlikely is that a Local Authority has a monitoring officer (usually a senior lawyer) who is responsible for drawing the attention of Members to any decisions they make which are unlawful. If Members ignore the monitoring officer it will be a matter for the District Auditor. I would also think a chief officer who failed to draw attention to a H&S issue in a report to Members would be failing in his/her duty and would probably be in breach of HASAWA. With regard to corporate manslaughter again I think it would be the Councils Chief Officers/ Directors rather than elected Members who would be in the frame. Why refer to the "innocent ratepayers". I never hear anyone refer to "innocent customers" when private sector companies are fined. At the end of the day it all gets passed on to us as customers or ratepayers.