What happens if I don’t comply?

If inspectors arrive from either the Health and Safety Executive (the HSE is responsible for factories, farms and building sites) or the local authority (responsible for offices, shops, hotels and catering), and find the business is in breach of regulations there are a number of types of enforcement action they can take, in increasing order of severity, as follows:

• offer advice, either face to face or in writing
• issue a warning, highlighting a failure to comply with the law
• serve an improvement notice
• withdraw approvals to undertake certain activities
• vary licencing conditions or exemptions
• issue formal cautions (formal statement of an offence having been committed, acknowledged by the recipient)
• serve a prohibition notice (to stop activities in order to prevent serious personal injury)
• prosecute at the magistrates or Crown Court. This can lead to fines up to a maximum of between £5,000 and £20,000 in the lower courts and unlimited in the Crown Court. In extreme cases it can lead to imprisonment.

At the same time employees can take civil actions against their employer if they suffer injury or illness and the employer has breached the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999.