Under Section 2 of the Company Directors Disqualification Act 1986 a court may disqualify a person from being the director of a company if they are convicted of an indictable offense (whether on indictment or summarily if triable either way) if the offense was in connection with the running of a company. The period of disqualification may be for up to 5 years in the Magistrates’ Court or up to 15 years in the Crown Court. Somewhere in the order of ten directors have been disqualified to date following prosecution for health and safety offenses.
In a recent case, a director was banned for 5 years for health and safety offences and fined £17,000 (with costs of £9168) following exposure of workers to lead in the workplace. The company was also fine £70,000 (costs of £27,507) for a range of offences.