The lack of a prosecution (that I am aware of) under s44 since HSWA's enactment has been on my mind lately.
Maybe some of the forum's legal experts can hint at any currently waiting in the wings? Surely from the significant number of prosecutions of late with fines in the hundreds of thousands there are incidences of poor governance and failure to meet obligations under s44?
I agree, of the 66 prosecutions to date 61 of those relate to training and competencies. I would have thought that within this there was some level of poor governance that had an influence?
I'm pleased to see I'm not the only one thinking about this. It seems highly unlikely that none of the prosecutions to date involved a breach of s44, so I would be interested to know why WS has not been pursuing them and if this is likely to change in the future.
In the few cases so far, it's likely the officers' actions were not held to be egregious enough to warrant criminalising them on top of imposing very significant financial and reputational penalties on the company. Maybe a three strikes system could cross this line.