Corporate Manslaughter UK: Sentences and Real Cases

We’ll cut directly to the chase here: yes, as an employer, you can be jailed for manslaughter for wrongdoing.

Whenever you’re on-site, you’ve got a duty of care to your workers, and negligence in that could lead to several years of imprisonment. In addition to this, you can be subject to thousands of pounds of fine, or even both, i.e. imprisonment and fine.

There are different penalties on different accounts of wrongdoing under various health and safety laws. In this post, we’ll share the main offences and the real UK cases in which they were applied, along with the sentence each one drew. The main focus will be on the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974.

Corporate Manslaughter or Gross Negligence Manslaughter?

Two offences get used interchangeably in conversation, and they are not the same thing. Corporate manslaughter is charged against the organisation under the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007, and it ends in an unlimited fine, because a company cannot be sent to prison. Gross negligence manslaughter is a common law offence charged against a named person, and that is the one that carries a custodial sentence.

That distinction decides who carries the risk personally. A site manager who ignores a prohibition notice is not exposed to the 2007 Act, they are exposed to gross negligence manslaughter alongside sections 2 and 3 of HSWA 1974, and the cases below show what that has meant in practice. Knowing exactly who is accountable on each of your sites is where managing that exposure starts. The HSE’s corporate manslaughter guidance sets out the organisational test, and the CPS guidance explains why individuals have to be charged separately.

Lack of Safety Equipment on Site

This is a no brainer. On having a business, you should ensure that your personnel have the necessary health and safety information, instruction, training, and supervision. In addition to this, it is your responsibility to make sure they have all the necessary arrangements in place for the safe use, handling, storage, and transport of construction machinery and materials. They should also have safety equipment available on site to avoid accidents.

These requirements aren’t just essential on humanitarian grounds; they are also emphasised in sections 2 to 6 of HSWA 1974.

Case: Norman McKenzie / Petyo Hristanov death (January 2015, County Armagh) Norman McKenzie skimmed on safety requirements, which led to the death of Petyo Hristanov in January 2015 near Portadown, County Armagh. The victim was nailing down metal sheeting on a farm shed roof in rainy conditions, without any safety equipment or safeguards in place, leading to his fatal fall. Craigavon Crown Court initially imposed 15 months’ imprisonment suspended for three years on the manslaughter count, plus £1,000 fines on each of three other offences. The Northern Ireland Court of Appeal held that outcome to be unduly lenient and substituted 24 months, half in custody and half on licence, replacing the fines with concurrent six-month terms; the reasoning is set out in full in the appeal judgment.

Negligence in Ensuring the Safety of On-site Workers During Construction or Demolition

While working on a site, you, as a contractor, are responsible for everyone’s safety when they are within the premises of the site or within the area which might be dangerous due to site activities. This includes workers both under and outside your employment.

Case: Paramjit Singh (Chilworth, Hampshire) Paramjit Singh, 48, was demolishing a garage with a digger when he brought the last standing wall down onto 64-year-old Kulwant Singh Athwal, who was working behind it. He had set no exclusion zone, put up no signage, and prepared neither a written demolition plan nor a site-specific risk assessment. Winchester Crown Court convicted him of gross negligence manslaughter and jailed him for three years and three months, on top of guilty pleas he had already entered to two offences under HSWA 1974, as set out in the sentencing report.

Case: Andrew Winterton and Dean Wortley (Northamptonshire) Shane Wilkinson, 33, was buried when an unsecured trench wall collapsed on a Conquest Homes site in Collyweston. The trench sides had never been properly supported and the site lacked basic measures such as barriers. Andrew Winterton, 52, the site manager and company director, was convicted of gross negligence manslaughter at Northampton Crown Court and jailed for four years, with £90,500 in fines and costs against him and Conquest Homes. Dean Wortley, 48, who dug the trench, was convicted of health and safety offences rather than manslaughter, receiving 12 months and £20,000 in costs according to the case report.

Testing and Safety of Machinery and Necessary Training of Operating Personnel

You are responsible for ensuring that all the machinery brought onto the site is designed and constructed such that it isn’t a threat to the users. You must carry out testing and examination of the machinery. In addition, you are responsible for ensuring that the personnel operating it have adequate information about its usage procedure.

Case: Master Construction Products (Skips) Ltd (January 2015) Master Construction Products (Skips) Ltd failed to implement a safe system of work for the machinery on its site, and a worker died after being drawn into an unguarded trommel used to sort waste material. This is the one case on this page that produced a corporate manslaughter conviction rather than a custodial sentence, and it ended exactly as the 2007 Act requires: with a fine of £255,000 against the company, recorded on HSE’s public conviction record alongside the January 2015 offence date.

Case: Graham Kuhlmann and Kevin March (West Aberthaw, Vale of Glamorgan) A 38-year-old dumper driver was thrown from his machine on a site with no designated traffic routes, on an uneven access ramp whose slope exceeded what the dumper was rated to climb. He was not wearing a seatbelt and was found two days later. Graham Kuhlmann, project manager, received 21 weeks’ custody suspended for 12 months and £5,000 in costs; Kevin March, sole director of the principal contractor, received 32 weeks suspended for 12 months and £20,000 in costs, per the sentencing details. Both sentences turned on machinery being put to work in conditions nobody had assessed it against.

Negligence in Safety of Off-site People

As a contractor, you’re also responsible for people that might come in contact with your site while passing by.

Case: Kelvin Adsett / IS Europe Ltd (Hanover Square, London) Kelvin Adsett, 64, supervisor at IS Europe Ltd, left three unglazed window frames weighing 655kg leaning against a building on a public pavement overnight, unsecured and with no barrier around them. They toppled onto 43-year-old lawyer Amanda Telfer as she walked past, and she died at the scene. The Old Bailey convicted Adsett of gross negligence manslaughter and a section 7 offence under HSWA 1974 and jailed him for 12 months; Westgreen Construction’s site manager Damian Lakin-Hall was acquitted of manslaughter but convicted of failing to take reasonable care at work, receiving six months suspended for two years. The court report records the point that should worry any director relying on the company to absorb the consequences: the judge said IS Europe’s fine would have been £100,000, but the company was dormant with £250 in the bank, so £250 was the only fine he could impose. The prison sentence, unlike the fine, could not be reduced by the state of the balance sheet.

Breach of Improvement Notice or Prohibition Notice

According to section 22 of HSWA 1974, the HSE inspectors may serve a prohibition notice if they believe that activities on your site pose a health or safety risk.

Case: Faruk Patel (Leicester, tried at Birmingham Crown Court) Tasadaq Ur-Rehman, 40, an experienced window fitter, was asked to fit first-floor windows on a site where ceiling openings were unguarded, no scaffolding had been provided and the only access was a broken, untethered ladder. He fell through a skylight aperture in the first-floor roof and died four days later. Two days after the fall, HSE served site manager Faruk Patel with a prohibition notice halting all work at height, and inspectors returned to find the work continuing regardless: he later pleaded guilty to breaching section 3(2) of HSWA 1974 and to breaching that notice twice. He was convicted of gross negligence manslaughter and jailed for 30 months, as recorded in the trial report. The sequence matters, because ignoring a notice served during an investigation is what turned a fatal accident into evidence of how the site was run.

Negligence in Following Risk Assessments

A risk assessment that names a hazard and stops there is worse than no paperwork at all, because it proves you knew. Our RAMS guide sets out what a method statement has to carry for the control to be real rather than recorded.

Case: Conrad Sidebottom and Richard Golding / Siday Construction Ltd (Ellerby Street, Fulham) An unsupported basement excavation collapsed on 37-year-old labourer Anghel Milosavlevici, crushing and trapping him. A method statement existed, drafted by the health and safety advisor brought in to advise the contractor, but it was inadequate and was not followed, and nobody stopped the work despite having the authority to do so. Conrad Sidebottom, 46, commercial director of Siday Construction Ltd, was convicted of manslaughter and jailed for three years and three months; Richard Golding, 43, the advisor who wrote the method statement, was convicted of exposing another to risk and jailed for nine months, according to the case summary. Writing the document is not the duty; making sure the work matches it is.

What These Sentences Mean For Your Site

Read the cases together and a pattern shows up. Every prosecution turned on something that was already documented, or should have been: a risk assessment with no safeguards behind it, a prohibition notice ignored, machinery hired without a trained operator, a public footpath nobody had assessed. None of it was exotic.

The compliance challenges employers face are rarely obscure either, and our accident investigation service exists because what you do in the first week after an incident shapes the prosecution that follows it.

We audit sites across the UK and Ireland against the same controls the HSE tests in court. Book a compliance consultation and we will tell you where you stand before anyone else has to.