Employer pleads guilty to breaching HASWA which concerns persons not in employment who are exposed to health and safety risks caused by an employer
S&S Quality Building Contractors Ltd were recently fined £600,000 at Basildon Crown Court and ordered to pay £36,894 in legal costs.
As S&S’s director, Shlomo Pines, was given a 12 month community order for 100 hours of unpaid work and fined £4,200. He pleaded guilty to s 37 of the Health and Safety At Work Act (HASWA) which concerns offences committed with the consent or connivance of directors.
Prosecution came about following a concern raised that people were sleeping on site. HSE inspectors visited S&S’s Regent House site in Brentwood, Essex and identified multiple failings in fire safety management.
Working in concert with Essex Fire & Rescue Service, HSE determined that Regent House was being poorly managed, and construction work carried out in an unsafe manner likely to result in a fire.
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Shlomo Pines was confirmed to have visited the site regularly, and yet failed to act upon previous HSE interventions. These interventions against S&S had identified uncontrolled fire risks taking place over several years.
This poor record with the HSE counted against S&S, as the court ruled them highly culpable. However, their lack of previous convictions and early guilty plea brought the fine down from a potential £1.2 million to £600,000.
Similarly, Mr Pines was also found highly culpable, but a lack of aggravating factors brought his sentence down from potential 26 weeks’ custody to a community order and a fine appropriate to his disposal income.
Want to know more about an employer’s health and safety obligations? Visit BrAInbox today where you can find answers to questions like What responsibility do employers have for working conditions?
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