Posted By Paul Craythorne Huw, I have some experience of this in one of my former employments. An employee at our Scottish plant went missing for several hours one afternoon. His work colleagues and supervisors went in search of him because they were concerned after not seeing him for a while. He was found drowned in a hot well tank (used in the system for the cooling of process water). The police and HSE investigated the incident as per norm and the outcome was that he had committed suicide. There were very serious personal reasons for this which I obviously cannot discuss but the company was cleared of any blame and responsibility under H&S law. My personal opinion on the matter is that if the company has taken all reasonable measures to ensure that they have removed or reduced the risk of injury (including fatality) arising out of activities connected with their undertaking, then they would not be found guilty under H&S law if someone deliberately took their own life. However, when looking at H&S risk, serious consideration should be given to the management of work related stress. If the company did not consider this, or if they knew that an employee was in a stressed condition and did nothing about it, then they may be open to a challenge under the management regs for not carrying out a suitable and sufficient risk assessment and employing the appropriate corrective action. It is a little bit grey and would probably require a test case to solve it. I would guess, judging by your comments, that you are aware of employee stress at work and therefore you should put in place a management policy to deal with this issue. I hope that this information is of some use to you. Regards, Paul