Nursing and care homes bear strict responsibilities for the welfare of their vulnerable residents and any health and safety breaches are liable to be heavily punished. In a case on point a private healthcare company received a seven-figure fine after faulty plumbing resulted in an 84-year-old man’s death from Legionnaire’s disease.
The source of the Legionella bacterium which killed the nursing home resident was believed to be an infected hot tap in his room. There was evidence of long-term deficiencies in the home’s plumbing and that a refurbishment of the system shortly before the man’s death had only served to worsen the situation.
After the company that ran the private home pleaded guilty to an offence under the Health and Safety at Work, etc Act 1974, it was fined £3 million. The judge noted that responsibility for ensuring the safety of the home’s plumbing had been devolved to an inadequately trained manager. The home’s former maintenance man had been dismissed for falsifying records of safety checks and there had been a failure to flush the system regularly and to carry out water temperature checks.
In ruling on the company’s challenge to the level of the fine, the Court of Appeal described it as a very bad case. Multiple failures had exposed the home’s staff and residents to the bacterium over a number of years. The starting point taken by the judge rightly reflected the company’s annual turnover of well over £50 million.
In halving the fine to £1.5 million, however, the Court ruled that the judge was wrong to take into account the fact that the company was part of a larger group, which had total annual revenues approaching £10 billion. The mere fact that the company was a wholly-owned subsidiary of a larger parent did not mean that the resources of the parent should be treated as available to, or part of the turnover of, the subsidiary. Such an approach would not accord with the economic realities of the relationship and it was the company alone that bore criminal responsibility for the man’s death.
BUPA Care Homes (BNH) Limited v Regina. Case Number: 201802922/A4