Your Contractor Died on Your Premises — You're Still Liable: The Air Products £2.4m Fine

Hiring a specialist contractor doesn't end your health and safety obligations. It just adds another layer of them. That's the hard lesson from this week's Air Products prosecution — a £2.475 million fine after two pest control workers were killed at a chicken processing factory in Norfolk, with both the contractor firm and the site owner prosecuted by the HSE.

If your business ever brings in external contractors — for maintenance, cleaning, pest control, electrical work, or anything else — this case sets out exactly where your liability starts and why it doesn't stop when the contractor's van pulls up.

What Happened at Banham Poultry?

In April 2026, Air Products — a specialist gas and industrial services firm — was fined £2.475 million following the deaths of two pest control workers at a chicken factory in Attleborough, Norfolk, operated by Banham Poultry. Banham Poultry, as the site owner and principal employer, was also prosecuted alongside the contractor.

The case received BBC national coverage. The core finding was clear: the site owner's duty of care to workers on the premises extends to contracted workers, not just direct employees. That duty cannot be delegated by signing a contract with a third party.

The HSE's prosecution of both parties — the contractor AND the site owner — is exactly the point. When something goes catastrophically wrong with a contractor working on your premises, the question isn't just "did the contractor do something wrong?" It's also: "Did the site owner provide a safe place to work, give adequate information about site hazards, and co-ordinate safety effectively?"

The Legal Framework: Section 3 of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974

The legal basis for prosecuting site owners in contractor deaths is Section 3 of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 (HSWA). This section places a duty on every employer to conduct their undertaking in a way that doesn't expose persons not in their employment to risks to their health and safety.

Those "persons not in their employment" explicitly include:

• Contractors and their employees working on your site
• Sub-contractors brought in by your primary contractor
• Freelancers, sole traders, and agency workers
• Delivery drivers and other visitors with a work purpose

This isn't a grey area. The HSE's enforcement guidance makes clear that businesses can't discharge this duty by simply requiring a contractor to have their own health and safety policy. You must actively manage the risks that exist on your premises and ensure contractors have the information, training, and safe working conditions they need to do the job without being killed.

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What "Duty of Care for Contractors" Actually Means in Practice

Here are the specific obligations that apply when contractors come onto your site — obligations that many SMBs don't have formally documented.

1. Pre-Contract Risk Assessment

Before a contractor starts work, you must assess the site hazards they will face. This is not the contractor's assessment of the work they're doing — it's your assessment of what your site presents as a risk to them. For a food processing environment, that might include:

• Confined spaces and the gases or oxygen depletion risks inside them
• Chemical hazards from cleaning agents already in use on site
• Machinery that must be isolated before certain work begins
• Traffic routes, loading areas, and pedestrian conflicts

2. Site Induction and Hazard Communication

Every contractor must receive a site-specific induction before starting work. This should be documented, signed, and retained. "We told them verbally" is not a defence. Typical induction elements include emergency procedures, permit-to-work systems, chemical and COSHH hazards on site, and restricted areas.

3. Permit-to-Work Systems for High-Risk Tasks

For work involving confined spaces, hot work, electrical isolation, or work at height, a formal permit-to-work (PTW) system is not optional — it's a minimum standard. Pest control in food production environments often involves confined space entry. If there was no PTW in operation at Banham Poultry for the work being done, that failure would be the site owner's responsibility as much as the contractor's.

4. Monitoring During the Work

You don't have to shadow every contractor every minute, but you do have to ensure there is sufficient oversight that work is being done safely. For high-risk tasks, that may mean a designated site supervisor with responsibility for checking the PTW is active and conditions haven't changed.

5. Co-ordination When Multiple Contractors Are Present

If two or more contractors are on site simultaneously, the site owner (or principal contractor in a CDM context) has an explicit duty to co-ordinate their activities. Two contractors working in adjacent areas with shared hazards without coordination is a common route to fatal incidents.

The Sectors Most Exposed to This Risk

Food and Hospitality

Food production and processing businesses, restaurants, hotels, and hospitality venues regularly use specialist contractors for pest control, refrigeration maintenance, gas line work, and deep cleaning. These tasks often involve confined spaces, pressurised systems, and chemical hazards — all of which require site-side risk management, not just contractor competence.

Facilities Management

FM companies that manage properties on behalf of landlords or commercial operators are in the "site owner" role for everything happening in the buildings they manage. A subcontracted electrical team working in a basement plant room? That's your duty of care to manage.

Construction

Construction sites with multiple subcontractors are already governed by CDM 2015, which explicitly allocates duties to Principal Contractors and Principal Designers. However, smaller construction projects and building owners who bring in tradespeople outside a formal CDM structure are often less well prepared.

Retail and Logistics

Distribution centres, retail warehouses, and supermarket backrooms frequently use contractors for maintenance, racking installation, and cold store work. Forklift interactions, cold chain environments, and racking inspections all carry significant contractor risk that site operators must manage.

What the HSE Can Do to Your Business

Following a contractor fatality on your premises, the HSE has broad enforcement powers:

• Criminal prosecution under Section 2 or Section 3 HSWA — the company, and potentially individual directors, can be prosecuted
• Unlimited fines — there is no cap on corporate fines for HSWA offences; Air Products' £2.475m is not an outlier for serious incidents
• Individual director disqualification — in the most serious cases, directors can be personally prohibited from managing a company for up to 15 years
• Prohibition notices — the HSE can shut down operations immediately if it identifies ongoing risk during an investigation
• Civil liability — prosecuted companies also face parallel civil claims from bereaved families, often settled for significant sums

The reputational consequence is equally serious. BBC national coverage of a workplace death creates lasting brand damage — customers, partners, and staff all take note.

FAQ: Contractor Duty of Care

Q: We have a health and safety policy. Does that protect us?
No. A policy document alone is not a defence. The HSE looks at what you actually did — the risk assessments, the inductions, the permits-to-work, the site oversight. A policy that exists in a drawer and isn't followed is worse than no policy, because it shows you knew what was required.

Q: We specified in our contract that the contractor is responsible for their workers' safety. Does that transfer the liability?
No. Section 3 of the HSWA imposes a non-delegable duty. You cannot contractually assign your Section 3 obligation to a third party. The contract can allocate costs and rights between you and the contractor, but it cannot remove your statutory duty to persons working on your premises.

Q: We're a very small business — does this still apply to us?
Yes. Section 3 applies to all employers regardless of size. There's no threshold of employees below which the duty doesn't apply. If you hire a contractor to do work on your premises, the duty applies.

Q: Do we need a formal contractor management system?
For most SMBs, a formal system doesn't need to be complex — but it does need to be documented. At minimum: pre-work risk assessment, signed site induction, permit-to-work for high-risk tasks, and a clear escalation process for when something unexpected happens on site.

Key Takeaways

• Hiring a contractor doesn't end your health and safety duty — it adds obligations around site hazard communication, supervision, and coordination
• Section 3 of the HSWA 1974 imposes a non-delegable duty to protect all workers on your premises, including contractors
• Both site owner AND contractor firm were prosecuted in the Air Products / Banham Poultry case — joint prosecution is standard HSE practice after a contractor fatality
• HSE fines are unlimited for corporate manslaughter and HSWA offences — £2.475m is not exceptional
• Documented inductions, permits-to-work, and risk assessments are your primary protection — verbal assurances are not a defence

ComplianceAlert monitors HSE prosecutions, enforcement guidance, and sector-specific health and safety changes — and alerts UK businesses before enforcement windows open. Every sector. One dashboard.

Start your free 7-day trial → compliancealert.co.uk — no credit card required.

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Related reading: HSE Asbestos Awareness Week: What Construction Businesses Face | Fair Work Agency Launches: What It Can Inspect | CIS Nil Returns: Three Changes Contractors Missed

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INTERNAL LINKS TO ADD: - HSE Asbestos Awareness Week blog → /blog/hse-asbestos-awareness-week-construction-inspections-2026 - Fair Work Agency launch blog → /blog/fair-work-agency-launched-what-it-can-check-april-2026 - Construction sector page → /construction EXTERNAL SOURCES: - Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, Section 3 → https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1974/37/section/3 - HSE: Managing contractors → https://www.hse.gov.uk/managing/contractors.htm - HSE prosecution database → https://www.hse.gov.uk/prosecutions/ CTA PLACEMENT: - Inline (after Section 3 explainer): ComplianceAlert monitors HSE enforcement — 7-day free trial - End CTA: Start your free 7-day trial REPURPOSING NOTES: - Social hook: "Air Products fined £2.475m. The contractor died on the site owner's premises. BOTH were prosecuted. Hiring a contractor doesn't end your duty of care." - Email angle: Subject: "Your contractor — your liability" / Hook: Section 3 non-delegable duty - Ad hook: "A worker died on your premises. You hired a contractor. You're still liable — here's why."