There's a piece in the Times today about corporate events companies giving up offering the more hazardous activities (whitewater rafting, bungee jumping, quad biking) normally favoured by accountancy firms and broking houses as teambuilding or development exercises.
The reason given in the article is that the events planners are afraid they will be liable to corporate manslaughter charges if anybody dies in their care. Some of their clients have apparently ruled these activities out of bounds where providers will still provide them, fearing the same exposure.
Now even if (and it seems to me a big if) a fatality at an outward bound centre was ever likely to trigger a corporate manslaughter prosecution rather than a charge under the Health and Safety at Work Act, there's a worrying implication there that the organisers and their clients are only taking full account of the risk involved in these activities now that their profits would be seriously imperilled by a prosecution (given that the body that advises on penalties has suggested 10% of turnover as a guide fine for juries in corporate killing cases).
The article is at http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/law/article2994773.ece
Click here to return to www.healthandsafetyprofessional.co.uk/
Tuesday, 4 December 2007
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