Sentencing Companies for Health & Safety and Environmental Offences - Learn Live

Introduction

Since the introduction of the Sentencing Guidelines, sentences for health & safety and environmental offences have increased significantly, very large recent sentences suggest the trend will continue.

Numerous questions arise when representing a company facing a regulatory sentence. Following the Health and Safety Guidelines, with regular comparisons with the Guidelines for Environmental offences, this virtual classroom seminar will demonstrate how to approach those questions.

What You Will Learn

This live broadcast will cover the following:

• Responding to the accusation, thinking about the sentence from the moment the client is at risk of prosecution
• Sentencing issues and the indication of plea
• Culpability - where to look for help when arguing culpability
• How to assess likelihood
• Addressing the courts discretion on moving up a harm category
• Considering what is needed to give the Court a true and fair picture of the defendant’s financial position.
• Why it is important to consider the differences at step two and at step three
• Dealing with large organisations - factors for the Court in moving beyond the Guidelines
• The importance and relevance of previous convictions and other previous enforcement action
• The exemplars of mitigating and aggravating factors and the need to keep in mind they are not to be treated as exhaustive lists
• The relationship between the story so far and the requirements of s164 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003
• Special issues with corporate manslaughter
• Food safety offences contrary to regulation 19 Food Safety and Hygiene (England) Regulations 2013
• Assessing harm in environmental cases including:
• s33 Environmental Protection Act 1990
• Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2010
• Trans frontier shipment of waste
• Lessons to be learned from environmental sentencing in health and safety cases and health & safety sentencing in environmental cases