LEGISLATION
THE COST OF FLOOR SAFETY
Thanks to changes to the way that health and safety breaches are penalised, there is increased pressure on floor cleaners to reduce the risk of potentially costly slips and trips. Here, John Wright, Business Development Director at Bonasystems, offers up some advice on how to increase floor safety and reduce the chances of any expensive penalties.
On 6 February 2016, a seismic shift in the way health and safety breaches are penalised came into force. Now, any case that comes to court relating to corporate manslaughter or contraventions in health and safety, food safety or hygiene will be tried under new guidelines, intended to make an example of companies who flout the law.
The key change is the amount of the fines that are expected to be levied. Previously, a company might have been looking at a relatively minor fine, historically, the average amount being around £5,000.
Clearly, this was pretty small beer to a company turning over several million, compared to businesses with more modest turnovers. It seemed highly unfair to many commentators who, at the same time, saw industries such as financial services facing stringent penalties for breaching regulations.
Now, after a two-year consultation and in an attempt to level the playing field, companies will be fined on the basis of their size, as well as the ‘seriousness’ of the offence, the last being assessed on a new scale of culpability and harm.
This is serious stuff for companies and their cleaning managers because it increases exponentially the level of potential fines that could be imposed. The scale shows that a company turning over £50million plus that is found to be highly culpable of a breach could be fined up to £10million. And in case readers think this is unlikely, there has already been a test case involving Thames Water, where the court of appeal stated that they could
foresee fines ‘equal to a substantial percentage, up to 100%, of the company’s pre-tax net profit for the year in question…even if this results in fines in excess of £100million’.
In addition, directors of companies themselves could now be personally culpable, with custodial sentences possible. And of course, this is not even touching the potential of civil personal injury costs, which could run into millions.
“Slips and trips are still the biggest
cause of work-based accidents in the UK, with 95% resulting in broken bones.”
Feeling concerned? Well, leaving the headlines of multi-million pound fines aside, there is actually a significant amount that companies and their cleaning contractors can do to prevent such a risk ever happening to them.
One of the key areas under scrutiny is floor safety. Slips and trips are still the biggest cause of work-based accidents in the UK, with 95% resulting in broken bones.
Many people assume that having a flooring assessment will inevitably result in the wholesale replacement of flooring at major cost. In fact, we often find that the opposite is true.
16 | Tomorrow’s Cleaning Floorcare Supplement
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