UK Construction and Law

Three improvement notices ignored, and the managing director is banned from any boardroom for five years

By Staff Writer  |  22 August 2026

A Cornish timber company that supplies fencing, gates and garden furniture was fined 20,000 pounds at Truro Crown Court on 20 August for breaching section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 and for contravening three improvement notices. Its managing director was fined 5,000 pounds on one count and disqualified as a company director for five years on the regulator's own application.

Truro Sawmills Limited, of Penhallow, Truro, pleaded guilty to four counts. One was the general duty owed to employees under section 2(1) of the 1974 Act. The other three were contraventions of requirements imposed by improvement notices, contrary to section 33(1)(g). Alistair Wright, the managing director, pleaded guilty to one count of contravening a requirement imposed by an improvement notice, contrary to section 33(1)(g) and section 37(1), the provision that reaches an officer of the company where the offence is committed with his consent or connivance or is attributable to his neglect.

The company was ordered to pay 5,000 pounds in costs and Mr Wright 2,500 pounds. The court granted the Health and Safety Executive's application to disqualify him from acting as a company director for five years under the Company Directors Disqualification Act 1986.

What the notices had required

Inspectors found that employees were not being protected from the ill health risks arising from wood dust, nor from the safety risks of rider operated lift trucks. Staff had not been trained appropriately to use the trucks. They had not been face fit tested for the respiratory protective equipment intended to protect them from dust, and they were not under suitable health surveillance. Improvement notices were served, and on the published account the company did not act on them.

Exposure to wood dust can cause asthma, respiratory conditions and cancer, on the inspectors' own statement of the harm. Health surveillance and face fit testing are the two controls that turn a written respiratory policy into a working one. The absence of both is what turned an inspection into a set of notices, and the absence of any response is what turned the notices into a prosecution.

Firms should be left in no doubt that companies and individuals who do not comply with health and safety legislation will be held accountable.

Melissa Lai-Hung, principal inspector at the Health and Safety Executive

The disqualification is the point

Fines against a small timber processor are unremarkable. The disqualification is not. A director ban obtained by the health and safety regulator, in a criminal court, alongside a fine for breaching an improvement notice, is a route that few directors in the construction supply chain factor into their view of enforcement risk. It bars the person from being involved in the promotion, formation or management of a company without the permission of the court, and it does so for five years whatever happens to the company itself.

An improvement notice is not correspondence. It is a statutory requirement with a compliance date, an appeal route to the employment tribunal, and a criminal offence attached to non compliance under section 33(1)(g).

For anyone buying fencing, decking or timber components into a project, the practical reading is narrower and more immediate. A supplier that has been served with notices it did not answer is a supplier whose production may be interrupted by enforcement action, and a prosecution of this kind is a matter of public record that a competent supply chain check would pick up. Mr Wright's disqualification also removes him from the management of the company that holds the customer relationships, which is a continuity question for anyone with an order on the books.

The prosecution was brought by the regulator's own enforcement lawyer. Sentencing followed the guideline for health and safety offences, which the court must apply unless satisfied that it would be contrary to the interests of justice to do so.