HSE fines and enforcement update

This is our regular round-up looking at recent Health & Safety Executive (HSE) prosecutions and enforcement trends in this, HSE’s 50th year.

Looking back to the start of the year, you’d be forgiven for wondering why regulatory lawyers make such a fuss:

• January produced HSE fines totalling around £400,000 across the whole of the UK

• In February, the total UK fines came to about £1,300,000 but the bulk was one large outlier of £1,000,000 – the rest totalled around  £300,000

• March, again, seemed light – a total of about £900,000 for all of the UK but again, deduct one large outlier (£566,000) and the remainder came to about £280,000.

All fairly modest sums so far. Then we get to April 2025…

Ten six figure fines and two seven figure fines helped ramp the total fines imposed by HSE up to almost £11,000,000, nearly 28 times the total for January 2025. Added to that, there was a 10-year prison sentence following a tragic paddleboarding incident that resulted in multiple fatalities.

So, what’s going on? Are HSE fines and enforcement action seasonal? Did safety performance take a sudden nosedive that is only now working its way through the courts? Have judges been told to crack down on rogue companies?

In truth, there’s no obvious pattern. The cases varied in age so there was no mysterious nosedive that coincided with the uptick in fines. Again, there was one very large outlier - £6,000,000 this time following multiple fatalities – though the sheer number and level of fines imposed across the month still far outstripped earlier months. The sectors affected varied widely – from construction, through chemical production, on to local authority  and transport issues, healthcare, defence, logistics, farming and leisure.

The most notable case involved the death of four people on a paddleboarding tour. It serves a stark and chilling example of how simple failings – shortcomings in training and planning and a failure to heed warnings – can have dire consequences, and how those simple, perhaps commonplace, failings can lead to disaster for those who died but also those who ran the business affected. The consequences of the failings were truly horrific but the penalty – 10 years in prison – reflected both those consequences and the extent of the failure. 

From a professional perspective, it is also notable that this safety prosecution was a CPS manslaughter prosecution supported by HSE that also involved charges under the 1974 Health & Safety at Work etc Act – exactly as the Memorandum of Understanding between police, CPS and HSE envisages in any circumstance where a fatality occurs in the workplace. Any business facing investigation after a fatality can expect investigation and interrogation from police, CPS, HSE and the local Coroner.

The largest financial outlier - £6,000,000 – concerned failings in relation to a guided busway leading to three fatalities. Although the work undertaken was unusual, the themes again are common to many safety prosecutions – guidance that was not followed, an absence of signage and a reluctance to accept that concerns raised were valid, leading to fatal accidents on three separate occasions. Unacceptable but avoidable. 

Another of the larger fines reported in April - £2,500,000 - in common with the paddleboarding tragedy, again involved multi-agency investigation and prosecution, concerning as it did both safety and environmental charges following an uncontrolled release of hydrochloric acid.

What can we learn from all of this?

Safety breaches often seem mundane but their consequences can be horrific and devastating for those directly affected. It is always better – and always better value – to focus on getting things right by implementing well established measures, consulting guidance and getting advice.

When things do go wrong, it is critical to get legal advice early: simple failings can lead to complex, multi-agency investigations which are difficult to manage even with expertise and experience – and impossible to address alone.