Being an Expert Witness is a privilege. It requires years of experience dealing with a variety of complex operational and strategic challenges, high levels of technical expertise, and an eternally curious and impartial mindset. It also offers a rare vantage point: seeing exactly how leadership decisions (or the absence of them) translate into criminal liability, organisational collapse, and human tragedy.
My work advising Boards and senior leaders is grounded in this reality. Understanding the legal framework is one thing; understanding how it plays out in in practice at the proverbial coal-face, the court, and under scrutiny, is quite another.
One case in which I was involved illustrates this starkly: R v Gaskells (North West) Ltd (Case No. 4328817), where the company was fined £650,000 (plus costs), the director personally fined £80,000, and sentenced to eight months in prison.
The Case
Gaskells (North West) Ltd) was prosecuted under S2(1) of Health & Safety at Work Act 1974 after one of its employees was killed in a compactor machine. In addition, the director (Jonathan Gaskell) pleaded guilty under S37, Health & Safety at Work Act 1974 and was imprisoned for 8 months. Section 37 makes directors and senior managers personally liable when a health and safety offence by their organisation occurs with their consent, connivance, or neglect. It is the key provision that allows enforcement bodies to prosecute individuals at the top of an organisation, not just the corporate entity, when leadership failures contribute to an offence. This is when safety failings at corporate level become personal.
This was not an unforeseeable accident. It was the culmination of years of missed warnings and safety failures that should not have been addressed. I was asked to ask as Expert Witness after the first 2nd incident, which focussed on the matters in that particular tragedy.
Expert Witness Observations – simple failures at corporate level
• An employee was seriously injured clearing a blockage on a waste compactor.
Approximately five years before the £650,000 fine and custodial sentence, Gaskells (North West) Ltd had already been prosecuted for a similar safety failure involving inadequate guarding on waste‑handling machinery. In that earlier incident:
- Dangerous moving parts were accessible during operation.
- No effective isolation or lock-off procedures existed.
- Risk assessments were generic or ignored.
- The company failed to learn from near misses and industry guidance and despite an employee being killed in the earlier case.
- Behaviours were unsafe, and allowed or over-looked.
The court made it clear: these were foreseeable, preventable, high-risk hazards requiring urgent organisational action. That action never came.
The company received a substantial fine for these safety failures and was explicitly warned that guarding failures on high‑risk machinery were foreseeable, preventable, and required immediate organisational attention.
What Went Wrong – Systemic Failings
The earlier prosecution highlighted several systemic weaknesses:
• Inadequate guarding on compactors, allowing access to dangerous parts.
• Failure to isolate machinery before clearing blockages.
• Poor supervision and training, leaving workers to improvise unsafe methods.
• Weak safety culture, with production pressures overriding safe working practices.
• Lack of board‑level oversight, meaning directors were unaware (or chose not to act on) known risks.
These safety failures were not technically complex; they were well‑established, high‑hazard risks in the waste and recycling sector that should have been managed. They were general leadership failings as well as specific safety failures.
Recurring Themes Across Both Cases
| Issue | Earlier Case | Later Case |
|---|---|---|
| Guarding failures | Inadequate guarding on compactor | Inadequate guarding on conveyor/compactor system |
| Failure to isolate machinery | Workers clearing blockages without lock-off | Worker accessed moving machinery without isolation |
| Known, foreseeable risk | Previous incidents and industry guidance ignored | Prior prosecution made the risk unequivocally known |
| Safety culture | Production pressures overrode safe practice | Same pattern persisted, showing no organisational learning |
| Management oversight | Weak supervision and unclear responsibilities | Director held personally accountable for systemic neglect |
| Legal consequences | Significant fine | Major fine + custodial sentence + disqualification |
Expert Observations — Leadership in Name Only
After the first prosecution, the company appeared to take corrective action:
- Appointment of a “Competent Person”
- Implementation of ISO 9001Quality Management System
- Director attendance at an IOSH-accredited course
But the evidence told a different story. It was very clear from digesting the organisation’s records that little care and respect for staff existed, the director had not taken heed of what can go wrong from the previous fatality and failed to ensure that work was being completed safely. My findings showed (inter alia) that:
- Competent Person duties were delegated to a junior employee with only a NEBOSH Certificate shortly after the contract was set up
- The ISO 9001 certification came from a non-UKAS body and lacked fundamental controls — even document versions couldn’t be identified (key documents such as policies, procedures and risk assessments had several versions, none of which were dated)
- The director failed to check, verify or ensure that systems for improvement were being followed
- Unsafe behaviours remained embedded in day-to-day practice, with personal risk assessment taking precedence over procedural compliance and senior managers ignoring or failing to notice them.
These were tick-box responses, not meaningful governance. And when leadership signals that compliance is optional, poor culture follows, and safety failure is the result.
The result was fatal.
Summary
This case demonstrates a simple truth; systems fail when leaders fail. And a safety failure can be catastrophic – to the teams exposed to risk, to the managers and others responsible, to the directors who are accountable, and to public reputation and reputational damage.
Warnings were clear. Risks were known but improvements were superficial.
The organisation paid a heavy price, but a worker (and the worker’s friends and family) paid the ultimate one.
A Final Thought for Leaders
If you think safety failures are operational issues and not for senior managers and boards, unless they are really serious you are wrong. Incidents which appear to be insignificant but are frequently occurring are warning signs. Having oversight of these is essential as the consequences land squarely at the top.
If Directors and other leaders delegate but without having any of their own assurance checks in place they leave themselves and others in the organisation vulnerable. The director in this case clearly wiped his hands of the problem once he thought he had set some systems up. There was scant consideration of quality, consistency or checking basic management systems. There were no processes in place for assurance, let alone reassurance that operations were working legally and safely
This shows that Boards and senior leaders need a combination of reassurance and assurance. They are not the same thing. Reassurance is about comfort and tells senior leaders that things feel under control. The key difference with assurance is evidence; this shows that your teams have verified controls which are shown to be working. Senior leaders need a combination of both to have some level of confidence that safety failure is not a topic on their meeting agenda.
