Don’t be caught out by the new health and safety guidelines – you must have sufficient health and safety measures in place!
The Sentencing Council issued new health and safety guidelines on 1st February 2016 to give organisations no option but to have the necessary health and safety management systems in place. The guidelines measure an organisations level of culpability as well as the level of harm. For example, if organisations have been in deliberate breach of, or had a flagrant disregard for the law this is classed as a very high level of culpability. Also, level of harm is measured against two factors; the seriousness of harm risked and likelihood of harm, where category 1 is death.
If companies have not yet started to respond to the guidelines they are at risk of receiving hefty fines of up to £10 million from the courts as well as imprisonment of senior members depending on the seriousness of the offence. Fines are proportionate to the turnover of the offender so that fines “fairly and proportionately” show the severity of the offence, according to the Sentencing Council.
These new guidelines to 2016 will have most definitely come as a huge shock to organisations across the UK as they have caused a dramatic change in health and safety sentencing.
C365 Cloud can help you comply with these guidelines by providing you with a secure online compliance management system that helps you to audit, manage and improve your compliance with health and safety legislation.
There are already many cases of companies that have been heavily fined due to a breach of the guidelines. According to BLM’s Health and Safety tracker, since the guidelines were introduced almost 40% of construction companies have been fined, amounting to nearly £8 million.
To avoid violating these new guidelines organisations must ensure that they are fully engaged and committed to the investigation as well as guaranteeing that efficient health and safety measures are in action.
Not only will strictly following these guidelines avoid facing penalties from the courts and improve health and safety in the workplace but it can also contribute to delivering significant financial savings. A large organisation, that has been working to improve health and safety systems since these guidelines have been introduced, has seen a 6% drop in absenteeism rates, lowering their sickness absence cost by £12 million per annum. The reasons to follow these new guidelines therefore far outweigh the reasons to not comply.
C365Cloud
C365Cloud is an a cloud-hosted compliance management system designed to help any organisation audit, manage and improve their statutory compliance. The award-winning system is now used by 17,000 individual users and 3500 suppliers for over 100 compliance areas at 500,000 properties.
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