UK's Health & Safety Executive appoints Lester Aldridge to legal panel

The Health & Safety Executive (HSE) and local government are the enforcing authorities of the Health and Safety legislation and regulations in Britain.

In 2007 the HSE formalised a panel of solicitors for which MSI's UK south coast law firm, Lester Aldridge won a three year contract. They chose LA over fierce competition because of the firm’s depth and breadth of experience, its ability as a large organisation to provide excellent levels of service, and because LA’s lawyers have a strong rapport with the HSE inspectors.

Michael Veal (photo below), partner at Lester Aldridge heads up the Health and Safety team within the Dispute Resolution group.  He has been with LA for over seven years and has vast experience in health and safety enforcement work, including that related to airports, asbestos, construction/demolition, factories, farming and hazardous installations.

Typical HSE cases in which LA is instructed are where a company or person(s) are allegedly in breach of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and related legislation.  Michael and his team have recently been asked to deal with a number of major cases including:

• The prosecution of an industrial laundry following the death of a worker.

• The prosecution of a pet food company whose worker died whilst trying to unblock a production line problem.  The case is of particular topical interest, since two directors face manslaughter as well as health and safety charges, and issues relating to the new Corporate Manslaughter and Homicide Act 2007 are engaged.

• A further case which attracts particular media interest involves a prosecution brought jointly by the HSE and a local authority following the death of a child on a new housing development in Poole.

The HSE plays a dual sided role in that it is tasked with disseminating advice about, as well as upholding, the responsibilities set out in the health and safety legislation.  LA’s Health and Safety team is able to advise employers as well as enforcing authorities.

Additionally, the HSE website is extremely informative with plenty of advice for every business industry.

There are a number of FREE leaflets to help companies provide safe working environment and safeguard them from prosecution: visit http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/leaflets.htm for more information.