Health & social care
Health & safety and criminal prosecutions
Risk management has come under close scrutiny in recent years, matched by record fines where health and safety breaches occur and are prosecuted in the criminal courts.
The Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 is now in force and applies in full to health and social care bodies. The need to ensure that your policies and procedures reflect best practice has never been more important.
Our team has extensive experience in relation to clinical and non-clinical risk, particularly in the following areas:
- Policy advice, ensuring that your executive team can describe and explain how risk is assessed and managed in your organisation.
- Assisting your preparation for monitoring visits by the Health & Safety Executive (“HSE”); responding to Improvement Notices and/or Prohibition Notices served by the HSE on your organisation and where required negotiating extensions to deadlines in those notices or agreeing different modes of compliance.
- Advising throughout the process of enforcement by the HSE and Police following Serious Untoward Incidents: how investigation protocols operate and can allow you to retain control over the investigation; your handling strategy and how first impressions can affect investigators’ enforcement decisions; ensuring your own investigation proceeds swiftly but without prejudicing enforcement action taken by the Police/CPS.
- Support throughout the prosecution process, from representation at interviews under caution, advice on your plea and mitigating features of the offence, advocacy at trial and concise briefings to your Board on the effect of criminal proceedings on the reputation of your organisation and key individuals within it.
Health & safety partners
David Firth
Duncan Gordon-Smith
Janice Smith (Consultant)