Guard your reputation

摘要

Even without a specific assessment of health and safety fines in the food and drink arena over the past year, it is clear that the sentencing landscape has changed dramatically for UK businesses, with 19 fines of £1M or more across all sectors in 2016, compared with none in 2014. "As a result of the new sentencing guidelines, which came into force in February 2016, companies are starting to pay a lot more attention to health and safety compliance," says John Boyle, who is chair of the Food and Drink Industries Group at the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (lOSH).The cross-sector figures on the impact of the new guidelines emerged from a Freedom of Information request earlier this year.