Health and Safety Accountability
Event Organiser and Event Managers Acquitted of Health and Safety Charges Following a Fatal Accident
In 2014 a spectator at a cycle race in Wales was killed when a bike ran into her after it crashed off the track.
The local council brought charges under the Health and Safety at Work Act (HASAWA) against the British Cycling Foundation (BCF), the self-employed Event Manager and a Volunteer Marshal. The essence of their case was a lack of attention to detail in the planning and a failure to discharge a duty to ensure that spectators were separated from the hazard of cycles coming off the track.
BCF successfully defended themselves on the basis that they were not the sanctioning body but merely set the rules for the sport and that Welsh Cycling had actually supervised the race. The Event Manager’s defence was that he had submitted a risk assessment to Welsh Cycling who issued a permit for the race. There had never been an accident with a bike leaving the track at that point during previous events which is why the area was not taped off. The volunteer marshal escaped prosecution as the judge ordered that the prosecution had submitted insufficient evidence in his case.
Despite the acquittals
- the case highlights some interesting issues not least the vulnerability of the event staff to prosecution where they are managing genuine risk to life. Most event managers understand that a company has a duty of care to those not in their employment e.g. visitors and spectators etc under s3(1) of HASAWA but it is less well understood that the duty extends to the self-employed (in place of an employer) under s3(2). All individuals, including unpaid volunteers have duties under s7 of HASAWA to take reasonable care of the health and safety of others. In health and safety a criminal case is not a ‘whodunnit’ with a single culprit caught with a smoking gun. As this case shows, action can be taken against individuals and companies at all levels for the same accident. Hiring a professional event manager does not in itself protect an organisation from prosecution even if that event manager is prosecuted. Whether or not this case involved a civil law suit is not in the public domain but it should be clear that merely requiring event companies and the self-employed to hold insurances is no protection against a criminal prosecution.
- in this instance, an association such as the BCF is vulnerable to prosecution even though it was not actually running the event. There is a need to ensure that accountability for health and safety at all level is understood especially when the event is the product of a number of different agencies. Event venues, for example, do not normally own the events run in them but they do set the rules for safety in many cases so are not entirely immune to scrutiny from the authorities in the event of a serious accident.
