A new guideline recently published by the Sentencing Council is likely to result in increased penalties for individuals responsible for fatal workplace accidents. Chris Newton reports
The Sentencing Council has, for the first time, drawn up a comprehensive sentencing guideline for manslaughter cases including gross negligence manslaughter. Individuals responsible for workplace fatalities can be prosecuted for gross negligence manslaughter when they are in breach of a duty of care towards the victim, the breach causes the death of the victim and, having regard to the risk involved, the individual’s conduct was so bad as to amount to a criminal act or omission. An example may be an employer’s long-standing and serious disregard for the safety of employees, motivated by cost-cutting which has caused the death.
Current sentencing practice in gross negligence cases is generally lower in the overall context of manslaughter cases. The new guideline aims to give consistent sentencing for all forms of manslaughter. The offence range for gross negligence manslaughter is one to 18 years in prison but the maximum sentence if the judge departed from this is life imprisonment.
