Employer pleads guilty to breaching HASWA which concerns persons not in employment who are exposed to health and safety risks caused by an employer
S&S Quality Building Contractors Ltd were recently fined £600,000 at Basildon Crown Court and ordered to pay £36,894 in legal costs.
As S&S’s director, Shlomo Pines, was given a 12 month community order for 100 hours of unpaid work and fined £4,200. He pleaded guilty to s 37 of the Health and Safety At Work Act (HASWA) which concerns offences committed with the consent or connivance of directors.
Prosecution came about following a concern raised that people were sleeping on site. HSE inspectors visited S&S’s Regent House site in Brentwood, Essex and identified multiple failings in fire safety management.
Working in concert with Essex Fire & Rescue Service, HSE determined that Regent House was being poorly managed, and construction work carried out in an unsafe manner likely to result in a fire.
Shlomo Pines was confirmed to have visited the site regularly, and yet failed to act upon previous HSE interventions. These interventions against S&S had identified uncontrolled fire risks taking place over several years.
This poor record with the HSE counted against S&S, as the court ruled them highly culpable. However, their lack of previous convictions and early guilty plea brought the fine down from a potential £1.2 million to £600,000.
Similarly, Mr Pines was also found highly culpable, but a lack of aggravating factors brought his sentence down from potential 26 weeks’ custody to a community order and a fine appropriate to his disposal income.
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