Our solutions include
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Initial status review
Our health and safety experts will identify areas of compliance — providing assurance to senior management teams that effective systems are in place — while identifying any gaps in compliance that offer opportunities to improve systems and practices.
Proactively managing health and safety compliance in this way helps to create a safer work environment, improve staff engagement and organisational culture, and ensure robust policies and strategies that minimise risk and achieve better levels of legal compliance.
Work with us to ensure that your organisation is always ‘inspection ready’, should the regulator come knocking.
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Retained services
Ongoing reviews, monitoring and support at a frequency to suit you. This bespoke service allows your organisation to have on-site, focused advice and support — providing continual reassurance that your health and safety management system is robust, fit for purpose and adapting with your organisation.
Depending on the initial status review, we’ll recommend a package of support tailored to your organisation. As an example, our clients frequently start with 12 days’ support in year one, decreasing to seven and then five days in the following two years. This tried-and-tested approach is intended to upskill your internal compliance team — quickly getting them to a place where they’re confident and competent to ensure compliance with limited audit and oversight.
FAQs
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Who does health and safety law apply to?
The Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 (HSWA) is the primary piece of legislation that covers occupational health and safety in Great Britain.
Every business is bound by health and safety law — regardless of size or nature of operations. All businesses must — so far as reasonably practical — ensure that their employees and non-employees (such as contractors, members of the public and visitors) are protected from the health and safety risks that arise as a result of their operations.
Additionally, all employees have obligations to take care of their own health and safety, as well as that of others who may be affected by their actions or omissions at work.
Directors, managers, secretaries and other similar officers of a corporate body (including members where the affairs of the business are managed by its members) have specific liability if a health and safety offence is committed by a business with their consent or connivance — or if the offence committed is attributable to any neglect by those individuals.
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What can a duty holder do to ensure compliance with health and safety law?
It’s important to understand the legal obligations placed on you as a duty holder. Getting specialist advice from lawyers and consultants can help to ensure that you’ve met all your legal obligations and implemented a robust health and safety management system to keep you compliant — and keep your employees and non-employees safe.
It’s important to regularly review and refresh your health and safety policies, procedures and risk assessments. Seeking specialist input to stress-test your procedures through spot checks and regular audits can be an excellent way to ensure ongoing compliance.
Rolling out training is essential to ensure that everyone in the business understands your health and safety management system, as well as their own responsibilities. This is a legal requirement. Brabners Protect can provide you with bespoke training materials and briefings to help you discharge this essential legal obligation.
Our Brabners Protect initial status review can help to ensure that you’ve met all your legal obligations and implemented a robust health and safety management system to keep you compliant and your people safe.
It’s also important to regularly review and refresh your health and safety policies, procedures and risk assessments to ensure they’re up to date and robust. Things change and evolve as your business operations and personnel do — your health and safety management system can’t remain static. Our Brabners Protect retained services provide regular on-site reviews, monitoring and support at a frequency to suit you.
Your business should also have demonstrable and visible health and safety leadership to truly embed a strong culture of compliance. Brabners Protect can provide bespoke safety leadership training and support services.
Brabners Protect is always tailored to you. One size never fits all and we believe in only selling you products or services that you need. We’ll give you our advice and recommendations, then work with you to find a solution that suits your business and team.
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What happens if you breach health and safety law?
If a regulator believes that your organisation has committed a material breach of health and safety law, they may take enforcement action against you.
Their options include providing you with informal advice, serving you with an ‘improvement notice’ (requiring you to take particular actions by a certain date) or ‘prohibition notice’ (prohibiting you from undertaking a particular activity for a defined time period) or undertaking a more thorough investigation and/or prosecuting the organisation. Failure to comply with an improvement or prohibition notice is a separate offence for which an organisation can be prosecuted.
Health and safety offences are criminal in nature, so a successful conviction following a prosecution will lead to the company having a criminal record. Additionally, under the Sentencing Council Guidelines for health and safety offences, the fines levied after a successful conviction are potentially unlimited.
For organisations with a turnover between £2m and £10m, fines can range from £100 (for the most minor breaches risking minimal harm) to £1.6m (for the most flagrant breaches with a high risk of death). A turnover of between £10m and £50m can result in fines of £1,000 to £4m. For those with a turnover above £50m, fines can range from £3,000 to £10m.
Individuals convicted of health and safety offences could receive a custodial sentence and/or fine. For offences where the individual fell far below the legal standard and this resulted in a risk of serious harm, an individual can face up to two years in prison. If a fine is levied against an individual, this is determined by reference to the seriousness of the offence and the individuals’ weekly income.
It’s important to remember that your organisation may have insurance that provides cover for investigating alleged breaches and/or defending health and safety prosecutions. However, as the fines arising from a successful conviction under health and safety law are criminal in nature, they cannot be insured. They will therefore be payable — in full — by a successfully convicted organisation or individual.
The regulator is also entitled to recover its costs for investigating and the enforcement of health and safety law when a material breach has been identified. For complex investigations — particularly those involving serious injuries or fatalities — the timescale from incident to prosecution can span several years, so the cost of the regulator’s time to investigate and prosecute an organisation can be significant. These costs are also unlikely to be covered by insurance.
Given the serious consequences associated with health and safety breaches and the general trajectory of increasing fines each year, it has never been more important to ensure that you have a robust health and safety management system in place.
We’ll always be there with you when the worst happens — but proactively managing risk through Brabners Protect significantly reduces the likelihood of serious incidents occurring in your business.
If an incident does occur — or the HSE believes that it has identified a material breach of health and safety law during a site visit — being able to demonstrate a robust approach to health and safety management through Brabners Protect will go a long way to help defend or mitigate any enforcement action. It can also have a significant impact on any fines imposed following a successful conviction.
