Winches Review

Under Section 33 of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 (HSWA), it is an offence to breach any health and safety regulations. This includes the WAHR. Under Regulation 10 of the WAHR, the standards that every employer (like Arrow Recycling Ltd) must meet to avoid injury to any person are set out. These include taking suitable and sufficient steps to prevent, so far as reasonably practicable, the fall of any material or object. Subsection 4 to Regulation 10, to which Arrow Recycling pleaded, requires every employer to ensure that materials and objects are stored in such a way as to prevent risk to any person arising from the collapse, overturning or unintended movement of such materials or objects. It was this requirement that Arrow failed to meet. Whilst it did not happen here, where the HSE wants to go further it can seek to prosecute a director or similar officer of the body corporate, for an offence under any of the relevant statutory provisions (which includes the WAHR) where it is committed with the consent or connivance of, or attributable to any neglect on the part of lifting equipment that person. This power, contained under Section 37 of the HSWA was used to convict company director Jonathan Marshall in November last year after a self-employed contractor was fatally injured after falling through a roof light. Despite the Arrow Recyclings guilty plea, the size of the fine was substantially larger than the company could have expected if the incident had occurred before 12 March 2015.