Health and Safety Enforcement: Law and Practice

Health and Safety Enforcement: Law and Practice has become the leading text for practitioners in this complex and growing branch of the law, providing an authoritative and practical guide to the key issues in health and safety enforcement from two leading specialists in this area.

This fourth edition continues to provide comprehensive coverage of health and safety inspectors' enforcement powers, the service and appeal of improvement and prohibition notices, and the law relating to health and safety offences, as well as expanded coverage of work-related death investigations, corporate and gross negligence manslaughter prosecutions, inquests, and the Coroner's procedure. The authors draw on their combined experience in the field to offer expert guidance on advising both individual and corporate clients while the inclusion of relevant extracts from the key statutes and the most important Health and Safety Regulations ensures ease of reference to the regulations.

Comprehensively and meticulously updated, this edition now also covers the vastly changed regulatory landscape, including the HSE 'fees for intervention', and provides a start-to-finish guide to criminal procedure in a health and safety case, including the recent changes to fines in the magistrates' courts. The authors also offer commentary on the new sentencing guidelines in respect of health and safety offences and corporate manslaughter, which are expected in late 2015, and insightful analysis of important decisions and their practical implications, such as R v Tangerine & Veolia, and other recent case law.

Richard Matthews QC, Barrister, 2 Bedford Row,James Ageros QC, Barrister, Crown Office Chambers

Richard Matthews QC is a barrister at 2 Bedford Row in London, where he specializes in health and safety enforcement and gross negligence and corporate manslaughter. He has acted for both the prosecution and the defence in a great number of high profile health and safety cases and corporate and gross negligence trials over many years and has been Standing Counsel to the Health and Safety Executive since May 2004. He has vast experience of inquests involving work-related deaths.


James Ageros QC is a barrister practising exclusively in health and safety and environmental law at Crown Office Chambers in London. He has been involved in many of the most legally significant health and safety cases of the past few years, acting for both the prosecution and the defence alongside additional court and advisory work. He has been a Specialist Regulatory Advocate in Health and Safety and Environmental Law since 2012.