3. In this Order "responsible person" means—
(a) in relation to a workplace, the employer, if the workplace is to any extent under his control;
(b) in relation to any premises not falling within paragraph (a)—
(i) the person who has control of the premises (as occupier or otherwise) in connection with the carrying on by him of a trade, business or other undertaking (for profit or not); or
(ii) the owner, where the person in control of the premises does not have control in connection with the carrying on by that person of a trade, business or other undertaking.
Im sorry, I fail to see how article 3 refers to a corporate body. I feel this is strengthened due to the fact that there is no definition of employer within the RRO.
There is always somebody, or even a collection of people who have ultimate control. I have never seen a corporate body referred to as "him" before.
FSO
As PhilB has said there have been several occassions where Fire Authorities have incorrectly served notices on named individuals instead of "body corporate".
This small error can have huge implications - if a notice is incorrectly served it has no legal standing and can be challenged.
Furthermore I have known some crafty companies deliberately letting this go all the way to court knowing fully that the Fire Authority has incorrectly served the notices. They then pull the "youve served it on the wrong person" trick out the hat.
This means the case gets kicked out, makes the fire authority look incompetent and in some cases the authority could also be sued, or left to pay court costs let alone deal with a very cheesed off magistrate who's time has been wasted.
A company secretary is not a responsible person. You have to appreciate that in English Law a limited company body can collectively be classed as a responsible person.
This means all controlling directors of that limited company bear an equal burden of responsibility.
If you have a company with say 12 directors, who have a chain of over 150 stores across the UK, how on earth do you pinpoint which one has the most control over the company or most responsibility for say the issue of fire safety? How can they possibly oversee the day to day management of all 150 stores?
Is it the MD? is it the Cheif Exec? Is it the area manager? Has the Cheif Exec devolved some repsonsibility for safety issues to say the Operations Director? It goes round in circles and each director may have an individual argument as to why they arent responsible.
THe MD might say, "Yes I am the person overall in charge of this company but I passed the responsibility for health and safety onto the Operations Director - afterall I cant possibly manager or oversee everything so i delegated this responsibility to him"
You can see how much of a headache it could become to pin someone down who is overall responsible. This is why with limited companies the body corporate is classed as the responsible person.
All the company secretary does is act as a point of contact / representative of that company / corporate body. He or she alone is not completely responsible for any offences that have been committed.
