Police Activity Questioned In Corporate Killing Investigations

A major news item regarding Corporate Killing legislation has been reported this week in the news section of the Health and Safety Professional website.

According to the article , police are arresting managers at their workplaces as part of corporate manslaughter investigations. Quoting a defence lawyer, Paul Burnley of DLA Piper, they say he has warned that in the cases he has been involved with, police have arrested supervisors, site-level managers and directors and interviewed them under caution within weeks of the incident.

The article goes on to say:

“…… Burnley said that he had been surprised by the rigour of the investigations compared with those into fatalities in the past.

He noted that investigators are counting site staff as senior management for the purposes of the Corporate Manslaughter Act. The Act, which came into force in April, requires the authorities to prove that the way an organisation's "activities are organised or managed by its senior managers causes a person's death".
"The police and the HSE are taking a very wide interpretation of who is a senior manager," said Burnley.”

The article also says that he claims that in the cases he is handling, officers have day-to-day advice from HSE inspectors, who are priming them with questions to ask managers about risk assessments and safety management generally, but also higher-level support.

A full report on Burnley's presentation to the IIRSM/HSW conference will be published in HSW magazine next month.

Source: HSW website

Read the full article here

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