Posted By Stuart Nagle Barrie. My colleagues and I have been involved in dealing with NHS hospitals who had 'just' entered the real world in respect of Health and Safety. If you provide me with your contact details, I will ask someone to contact you to discuss. Stuart Nagle

Posted By Eddie Newall As a long-time ex-employee of the NHS, and more recently involved in H & S training for NHS staff, my perception is that Crown immunity has partly contributed to the generally weak safety culture. Managers knew that they were immune from prosection and could ignore advice from Environmental Health Officers and safety inspectors. We had the ridiculous situation wherebye a hospital kitchen could be so unhygienic that if it were in a commercial catering establishment it would have been closed down by Environmental Health, but because it was a hospital catering facility only advice on improvements could be given. Removal of Crown immunity was strongly resisted by most MPs and it took the deaths of a large number of elderly patients (one estimate is that as many as 280 patients may have died from Salmonella poisoning) to change the law. Crown immunity was removed from NHS catering in 1986.