Corporate manslaughter: what do small firms need to know?

What the law says

• The Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 applies to companies, partnerships that employ people and other organisations. In Scotland the offence is called corporate homicide.
• A breach is gross if it falls far below what can reasonably be expected of the organisation in the circumstances.
• Senior management means the people who play significant roles in deciding how the whole or a substantial part of the activities are managed, or in managing them.
• The jury must consider any breach of health and safety law, how serious it was and how much of a risk of death it posed (section 8). It may also look at attitudes, systems and accepted practices, and at HSE guidance.

Individuals: gross negligence manslaughter

Directors and managers can be prosecuted for gross negligence manslaughter, which carries a maximum of life imprisonment. The prosecution has to prove:

• a duty of care, and a breach of it that caused the death
• a reasonably foreseeable, serious and obvious risk of death
• conduct so exceptionally bad that it deserves criminal punishment

Note: CPS guidance says that in small companies, where one person is responsible for most of the failings, charging that person with manslaughter, rather than the company, may be more appropriate.

What you should do

• Know which of your activities could kill someone. Falls from height and being struck by vehicles caused the most deaths at work in 2025/26.
• Check the controls for those activities on site, not only on paper.
• Follow HSE and recognised industry guidance.
• Act on warnings, near misses and concerns from your team.

What the courts have said

• R v Kite and OLL Ltd (Winchester Crown Court, 8 December 1994)

  After four teenagers died on a canoeing trip in Lyme Bay in 1993, the company became the first in English legal history convicted of manslaughter, and its managing director was jailed. It was a one-man company, so his guilt made it guilty; the 2007 Act removed the need to prove one senior person guilty first.

• R v Cotswold Geotechnical Holdings Ltd [2011] EWCA Crim 1337

  The first conviction under the 2007 Act: a 27-year-old geologist died when an unsupported trial pit collapsed while he worked in it alone. The £385,000 fine was upheld on appeal, although the court accepted it would put the small company into liquidation.

• R v Lion Steel Equipment Ltd (Manchester Crown Court, 20 July 2012)

  A maintenance worker with no roof work training, harness, boards or barriers fell 13 metres through a fragile rooflight while fixing a leak. The company pleaded guilty and was fined £480,000; the judge said the precautions would not have been expensive.