Health and Safety Fines in Hospitality: What the Data Says

Four regulatory domains govern most hospitality premises. Between 2022 and 2024, the typical (median) company fine for a licensing offence was £500. For food hygiene: £4,000. For fire safety: £22,500. For a conviction under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, it was £83,038.

All four figures come from the same source (Ministry of Justice Court Proceedings Database) and the same three-year window. Health and safety penalties run 21 times the typical food hygiene fine and 166 times the typical licensing one. Most operators spend the most time worrying about the domains where the financial penalties are smallest.

The gap is built into sentencing. The Health and Safety Offences Sentencing Guideline ties fines to the offender's annual turnover through a culpability and harm matrix. A pub turning over £500,000 and a hotel group at £20 million face different starting points for the same breach. Licensing offences sit outside that guideline entirely, and the food hygiene matrix starts far lower for the same turnover. A June 2025 amendment added guidance for very large organisations, formalising an approach the courts had already been taking in case law.

The trend since 2017

The typical company fine under the HSWA swings from year to year, and the average (mean) sits higher.¹

For an operator, the typical fine is what an ordinary breach at an ordinary business costs, without a headline disaster or national-chain turnover. It fell to £51,500 in 2019, rose to £80,000 in 2020, reached £100,000 in 2023, then fell to £58,343 in 2024. Those swings come from the case mix each year, so history can't price your own breach. The guideline does that, using your turnover, the harm, and culpability.

The average is the tail showing through. It runs two to three times the typical fine because fines scale with size, and a few large companies pull the average up. In 2024 it stayed above £218,000. The largest fine was £7,000,000 in 2023. Across the three-year window of 540 company convictions, the typical fine was £83,038, and a single-site operator sits there.

Where the fines concentrate

The MoJ data splits health and safety convictions into offence codes. The differences between them are large.

A fourth code, covering asbestos regulations, adds two company fines.

Code 08501 covers sections 2 and 3 of the Act: the duty of care to employees and the duty to persons not in your employment. Two-thirds of all corporate convictions fall here, and the typical fine is £128,750. If your risk assessment or safe system of work is found inadequate after an incident, this is the offence. Gas safety, electrical safety, COSHH, and water hygiene prosecutions all land in the same general codes; the MoJ data cannot separate them.

The bill beyond the fine

In January 2026, HSE prosecuted Oxford Active Ltd, a children's holiday camp operator, after a three-year-old was found face-down in a pool during a free-play session. The child recovered. Nobody died. The case that reached Chichester Crown Court was about the documentation and supervision systems that should have prevented the situation: pool safety procedures that were unclear, and controls that had been poorly communicated to staff. The fine was £6,000. Prosecution costs came to £12,000, twice the fine.

For smaller defendants, prosecution costs can exceed the fine. Total financial orders, once costs and the victim surcharge are added, usually run 30 to 60% above the fine element. That £83,038 typical fine points to total exposure somewhere in the region of £108,000 to £133,000.

HSE prosecutes selectively but wins almost every case it brings: 246 prosecutions in 2024/25 and a 96% conviction rate. Individuals can be prosecuted alongside companies. Of the 53 individuals fined between 2022 and 2024, the typical fine was £1,000 and the highest was £75,000.

Below the prosecution line

Most HSE interventions never become prosecutions. They still cost money. Fee for Intervention is HSE's cost-recovery charge: whenever an inspector identifies a material breach that requires written notification, HSE bills the business at £188 per hour for the time spent identifying the problem and advising on how to fix it.

FFI is not a fine. It is a bill, and it doesn't depend on a prosecution or even a formal investigation. An inspection where your risk assessment is out of date or your training records have gaps will generate FFI charges for every hour the inspector spends on the case. Three hours at £188 is £564, invoiced whether or not anything further happens.

Operators who maintain detailed licensing paperwork and daily food hygiene diaries often have nothing equivalent for health and safety. Of the four domains, it attracts the least daily attention and costs the most on conviction.