"This guide is based on UK law as at 1st February 2010, unless otherwise stated. It is part of a series of guides on Health and safety and corporate manslaughter.
At its worst, a breach of the health and safety rules has tragic consequences, leading to the loss of life. Historically, though, it's been hard to convict a company of corporate manslaughter (or corporate homicide in Scotland); the Herald of Free Enterprise disaster, the King's Cross fire and various rail crashes have all highlighted the problems.
The prosecution had to prove two things: first, that a single individual in the company was guilty of gross negligence manslaughter; second, that this individual was the 'controlling mind' of the company. If there was not enough evidence to convict an individual, there could be no prosecution of the company.
Larger companies therefore frequently escaped conviction as fatal accidents are often the result of failures by a number of people over a period of time. The larger the company, the greater the number; and the less likely the chance of proving that a single person, representing the company's controlling mind, had been grossly negligent.
After much delay, the law in this area was reformed by the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007, which came into force on 6 April 2008. A year later, the first prosecution of a company was brought under the new law.
Under the 2007 Act, the focus shifts from an individual failing to a broader failure of management, determined by a threefold test. An offence is committed if the way an organisation manages or organises its activities:
caused a person's death;
amounted to a gross breach of a relevant duty of care owed by the organisation to the victim; and
senior management played a substantial part in the breach."
http://www.out-law.com/page-11163