Fewer prosecutions; bigger fines

The latest figures released by the HSE show that a verdict was reached in 517 cases prosecuted by the HSE (or the Crown Office Procurator Fiscal Service in Scotland) in 2017/18 a fall from 612 cases in 2016/17. Of those cases a conviction for at least one offence was reached in 493 (95% of cases) leading to £72.6million in fines being issued. This represents an average fine of £147,000 per case an increase from £126,000 per case in 2016/17.

In addition to the fines around 7% of prosecutions resulted in an immediate custodial sentence and a further 9% in a suspended sentence.

In 2017/18 there were also 11,522 enforcement notices were issued by the HSE and local authorities (8,942 by the HSE, 2,580 local authorities) a decrease of 3% compared to the previous year.

The latest enforcement statistics can be downloaded from the HSE’s website at: https://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/enforcement.pdf

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