New sentencing guidelines have been agreed for convictions under the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 and other health and safety cases involving death. The guidelines take effect today (15 Feb 2010).
The original guideline was to levy a fine of between 2.5 and 10 per cent of the convicted company’s turnover, depending on the severity of the offence. The new guidelines provide a more flexible approach, but a fine will seldom be less than £1/2 million and may be far more: the impact of the fine on the shareholder, directors and prices charged are to be ignored.
In other health and safety related cases, the fine when death has resulted from corporate behaviour will seldom be less than £100,000.