Tough approach to health and safety offences

Salons are being warned a tough new regime of fines for health and safety offences is due to come into force from 1 February. Fines will now be based on the turnover of a business found guilty of committing an offence, not their profit, the new guidelines from the Sentencing Council have said. Firms will be split into four bands based on turnover, starting from “micro” (turnover up to £2m) up to large (more than £50m). For micro businesses, fines for the worst offences – normally “corporate manslaughter” where an employee or customer has died or been killed by a health and safety failing – will now start from £450,000. But for the most serious offences of all, fines could be as steep as £10m for health and safety breaches and £20m for corporate manslaughter. National Hairdressers' Federation chief executive Hilary Hall said: “These new fines and sentencing guidelines should serve as a wake-up call to all salons that health and safety is something that needs to be taken seriously.  Business owners need to provide their teams with guidelines and training so they know what to do in case of emergencies, how to reduce risk and improve the working environment for everyone who works in or visits the salon or barbershop." Separately, the NHF has also been working with the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) on its new five-year strategy for work-related safety and health. The HSE has emphasised that one element of this will be how it can support and communicate with small businesses, including how to highlight the cost of work-related ill-health. Hilary said: “The HSE has said it is actively looking to work with organisations that represent small businesses, such as the NHF, which is great news for our industry.If it means health and safety messages are communicated more effectively to hard-to-reach small businesses, then that can only be positive.” The NHF is urging hairdressing salons, barbershops and beauty salons to review their health and safety practices and to make use of the Federation’s new health and safety ‘box’ toolkit, which is designed to help salons stay on top of this vitally important issue.