More directors could be disqualified on safety grounds

A study carried out by the Employment Law Research Unit at the University of Warwick found that the Company Directors Disqualification Act (1986) had been used on only a few occasions over the past 20 years for health and safety failures in the management of companies.

In fact, the research showed the courts were 300 times more likely to disqualify company directors for financial mismanagement than they were for directors risking people's health and safety.

The study by Professor Alan Neal and Professor Frank Wright looked into the effectiveness of director disqualification under the 1986 Act as a legal sanction against directors convicted of health and safety offences.

They claimed the provisions of the Act were "very clear", and that no further clarification or additional legislation was needed to provide adequate sanctions for breaches of health and safety duties. However, despite this, there was a "surprising failure to utilise those very clear sanctions."

The researchers were able to identify only ten cases in which directors had been disqualified for health and safety reasons between the date when the 1986 Act took effect and the end point of their study in 2005.

They claimed the main reason the legislation was used so infrequently was a lack of awareness of the provisions by the health and safety authorities.

Inspectors informed

"In interviews conducted with HSE operations directors and their counterparts within local authorities, there emerged a surprisingly low level of awareness of the 1986 Act provisions," said Prof Neal.

"We found a marked absence of awareness even of what potential powers may be contained within the 1986 Act."

The University of Warwick team also concluded that "much more" could have been done to brief prosecution teams in relation to their ability to seek disqualifications. In particular, they suggested that steps needed to be taken to develop and draw up guidelines for prosecutors in relation to appropriate circumstances in which an application for a disqualification order might be made to a court.

There should also be a direction to all prosecutors - whether HSE, local authorities, or those acting as 'agents' for the prosecuting authorities - in relevant cases of health and safety management shortcomings, that any court which returns a guilty verdict in relation to a relevant indictable offence should be reminded of the powers available under the 1986 Act.

According to the University of Warwick, the Health and Safety Commission (HSC) has now recognised the need for health and safety inspectors to seek greater use of director disqualification as a penalty, and new instructions have been issued to the Health and Safety Executive.