The Sentencing Guidelines Council (SGC) recently published its definitive sentencing guideline for organisations convicted under the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 and for health and safety offences which cause death.
The guidelines came into effect on 15 February 2010, and arrived just before the proposed trial of the first company to be charged under the Corporate Manslaughter Act, Cotswold Geotechnical Holdings, although the trial was subsequently delayed due to the ill health of its managing director.
The Corporate Manslaughter Act, which came into force in April 2008, was the New Labour government’s most radical piece of legislation in the field of health and safety law. The Act only passed through Parliament after several defeats in the House of Lords and a government climb-down on deaths in police custody.
It abolished the old principle that a company could only be liable for manslaughter if the “directing mind” was proven to be responsible for gross failings which resulted in death. The Act replaces the directing mind principle with a gross negligence test, in which a substantial element of the breach must be caused by the
