Driving for work and the Corporate Manslaughter Law .
The Corporate Manslaughter Law and Corporate Homicide Act were implemented on 6th April 2008. The new law means that organisations not individuals can be prosecuted where a safety failure is the cause of a work related death. (Under the new act it no longer needs to be the sole cause of death). Such cases will not be limited to fatal accidents in the workplace, but will also include cases of deaths on the road.
Driving for work is the most dangerous work related activity performed by employees in the UK. 95% of all road accidents are caused by human error and it is estimated that a third of these accidents in the UK involve someone driving for work.
If you are a company director or manager you have a corporate responsibility for the safety of your employees and the risks to which they are exposed to when driving for work.
If found guilty an organisation could be ordered to:
Pay an unlimited fine (In some cases where the offence is so serious an order may be made to close it down)
Take remedial action within a specified period. Publicise nationally full detail of their conviction (at the organisation cost) including size of fine and remedial action taken.
Employers can no longer pass all responsibility and blame for a fatal crash on to the driver who is driving for work.
As an employer you have a duty of care to protect your drivers and other road users. It is your responsibility to ensure that the drivers of your vehicles who are driving for work possess adequate motoring skills. The road statistics are not fiction and speak for themselves. It is easy to forget that each statistic represents a real person injured or killed and the effect it has on their families.
The Sentencing Guidelines Council have launched guidance for judges on sentencing organisations convicted under the corporate manslaughter law on or after 15 February 2010.
The guideline suggests that in cases of corporate manslaughter the fine should seldom be less than £500,000 and may be measured in millions of pounds.
For deaths resulting from health and safety breaches, the guideline states an appropriate fine would seldom be less than £100,000 and may be measured in hundreds of thousands of pounds or more.
Crucially, these new guidelines do not make the rigid link between turnover and the fine to be imposed as suggested in previous consultations.
In a tough economic climate, firms simply cannot afford to be implicated in a case under the corporate manslaughter law. A fine of £500 000 or more is a strong deterrent for non-compliance. Equally, even if a company decided to fight a case and won, the legal fees alone could be enough to seriously damage their business.
Employers must also be aware that, if prosecuted under the Corporate Manslaughter law, they could be issued with a publicity order forcing them to notify the public of their conviction. This could cause irreparable damage to the company's reputation.
To view some of your legal requirements for driving at work, click here.
What must be done?
This is what we recommend for fleet operators -
Organisations will need to be able to demonstrate working health and safety procedures in line with all existing Health and Safety legislation to protect themselves from any prosecution when driving for work.
Work related road safety should be incorporated into existing health and safety procedures. Guidance can be found in the publication entitled ‘Driving for Work: managing work-related road safety’ produced jointly by the Health and Safety Executive and Department of Transport in 2003, which has become a minimum benchmark and focuses on risk assessment and management of an organisation’s drivers, vehicles and journeys.
The steps below are widely regarded as best practice:
Identify who the senior managers are, ensuring they accurately reflect the seniority of the role. All senior managers should fully understand their obligations surrounding health and safety at work and their duty of care to improve and enforce it in the workplace. A safe driving committee, comprising operations, HR, OHS, fleet and risk is an effective way to engage senior managers, set up systems, allocate duties to key members of staff and ensure that everything "reasonably practicable" is being done to avoid and reduce risks on the road when driving for work.
Formal company risk assessments, audits or health checks, should be carried out on both the fleet and individual employees, to identify potential risks and hazards within the organisation. This must include all company car drivers, cash takers, employees driving on company business, contractors and associated agencies. These risks need to be evaluated, and written policies and controls implemented to cover or eliminate them. All employees must be made to understand the health and safety policies, and be updated when changes are made.
Maintain appropriate records to demonstrate that vehicles used or provided by the business are legal, fit for purpose, regularly serviced and maintained.
Ensure that the driving licences and insurance arrangements of all employees who drive on business are checked at least annually to assess their eligibility when driving for work, and identify any potential risk areas.
Put in place accident management procedures to assess all collisions/incidents (business and private) and appropriate corrective action to reduce future risks.
Ensure systems are in place for continual reporting, monitoring, measurement, evaluation and improvement.
A quick overview of what to do:
Driver risk assessments.
Ensure drivers are given relevant information, training and supervision to be safe on the road. Implement road safety management procedures, including risk assessments for the driver, the vehicle and the journey when driving for work.
Driving risk assessments.
Regularly audit the safety of vehicles and journeys and amend policies and procedures accordingly if new risks are identified. Implement safe practices that eradicate or minimise identified driving risks.
Driver training, offer training to new drivers and all who are required to be driving for work. Especially when using different vehicles, vans etc.
Issue a driver’s handbook. Comprehensive road safety policies supported by top management. Ensure managers understand their role and responsibilities for managing road risk and are able to apply company policy.
Check driving licences regularly (Annually) consider carrying out a full DVLA check to remove the possible presentation of duplicate licences without endorsements.
Check Documents of all company vehicles (especially those owned by employees) vehicles used for work related travel
Keep a record of all accidents involving its employees and or vehicles, maintain and review accident statistics. Look for common trends and risks. Failure to do so could lead to a business being publicly named and shamed, and fined up to 10% of its annual turnover should a death occur as a result of “gross management's failure"