The Sentencing Council is an independent body which is responsible for developing guidelines for passing sentences to be used in the courts.
On July 4, the Sentencing Council announced a consultation for how offenders convicted of manslaughter should be sentenced. It is the first time that guidelines have been drawn up for these difficult cases, which could include unintended death resulting from a workplace fatality caused by an employer’s negligence. A prominent proposal in the consultation is for jail times to increase.
Manslaughter is split up into four different categories with ‘gross negligence manslaughter’ being one. In a work environment, this could be employers disregarding the safety of their employees. The Council said that “in most areas [of manslaughter], there are unlikely to be changes to sentence levels, but the Council expects that in some gross negligence cases, sentences will increase.”
“An example could be where a death was caused by an employer’s long-standing and serious disregard for the safety of employees which was motivated by cost-cutting.”
Lawyers are saying that if these new guidelines go ahead then this will have a positive influence on businesses and make them really think about their own health and safety measures. It is hoped that, as an industry this will lead to fewer cases of health and safety breaches by companies.
