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Corporate Manslaughter Act and the events industry

Britain’s burgeoning events industry is now estimated to be worth around £10 billion a year, as companies come up with more and more extreme ideas to foster corporate bonding.

Less adventurous staff, of course, always struggled to see the link between team-building and taking part in the latest white-knuckle experience. Their hopes were raised when initial commentaries on the new Corporate Manslaughter Act seemed to indicate that companies would be forced to drop potentially dangerous activities.

The Act, which comes into force on April 6, sets out a new offence for convicting an organisation where a “gross failure” in the way activities are managed or organised results in someone’s death. In other words, it seeks to strengthen the sanctions on negligent employers who, by ignoring good safety practice and necessary regulation, kill their staff and members of the public.

A substantial part of the failure in the organisation must be at senior level – among those who make significant decisions about the organisation or substantial parts of it – for a prosecution to be successful. And an organisation guilty of the offence will be liable to an unlimited fine.

While the Act is an opportunity for employers to think again about how risks are managed, the new offence does not require organisations to comply with new regulatory standards. Employers already owe its duties in the civil law of negligence and the new offence is based on these.

As Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents chief executive Tom Mullarkey has put it: “The Act is not designed to undermine a spirit of enterprise, nor to inhibit a creative, fun atmosphere which can be so valuable in welding work colleagues into a team.”

It looks as though employees who prefer flower-arranging to fire-eating or quilting to quad-bike racing may be skulking on the sidelines at team-building events for a little while longer. 
 
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Notes to Editors

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