The high cost of failure to conduct health & safety risk assessments

Today’s news that a mental health charity has been fined £30,000, plus £20,000 costs, for failing to protect the health and safety of their employee serves as a timely reminder of the importance of conducting regular robust risk assessments.

Ashleigh Ewing, 22, was stabbed to death by a paranoid schizophrenic who she was visiting at home within her role as a care worker for the Sunderland based charity, Mental Health Matters.

Prosecutor Kevin Donnelly said Miss Ewing's death was not caused by Mental Health Matters but that “Mental Health Matters failed to identify and respond to the increasing risks to which Ashleigh Ewing was exposed in the course of her employment.”  The court was told that there was no guarantee Miss Ewing would not have been killed had risk assessments been carried out, but that the likelihood could have been reduced.

The case highlights the need to keep health and safety risk assessments under regular review. Pam Waldron of the Health and Safety Executive said: “While Mental Health Matters had procedures in place, paperwork doesn't save lives. Those procedures and policies have got to be followed through.”

John Gollaglee Head of the Health Safety and Environmental Team at Pannone LLP commented:  “I would strongly advise companies and organisations that place their workforce in contact with potentially violent or dangerous individuals to take a step back to review the controls they have in place following this terrible tragedy. This appears to be a set of circumstances where the dangers presented by certain clients were such that regular focussed  and robust reviews of risk may have assisted in averting the loss of life and demonstrated that the charity was meeting it’s statutory obligations to protect - in so far as reasonably practical - against the risks inherent in it’s undertaking.”

To view John’s profile click here