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Rethinking Health and Safety Prosecutions: How Court Backlogs and HSE Strategy Favour Targeted Action Against Wilful Breaches and Reward Early, Evidence-Led Engagement

Published on: 26 March 2025

Published by a Law360 reporter
Legal News
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Article summary

Trials are now being timetabled for 2028. The backlog in the magistrates' courts, the entry point for all criminal matters, topped 300,000 last year. Chronic underfunding throughout the justice system causes and deepens the delays. The upshot is the worst of outcomes: cases falling apart, defendants and complainants enduring years before a hearing, and miscarriages of justice. Paradoxically, these strains may prompt better judgement in certain enforcement actions. Even diligent organisations can suffer incidents. Pursuing a prosecution is often out of proportion where an organisation has taken all reasonable steps to protect safety, notwithstanding a merely technical infringement.

Legal context

When the Robens report on workplace health and safety was finalised in 1972, a clear consensus emerged: criminal proceedings are not suited to most offences under health and safety law, and ought to be kept for breaches that are flagrant, wilful or reckless. The Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 (HSWA 1974) followed, shifting from prescriptive rules to broad duties, and establishing the Health and Safety Executive (HSE)...

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