The Corporate Manslaughter & Corporate Homicide Act 2007 comes into force on 6 April. Its aim is to make it easier to prosecute companies whose directors\' or managers\' negligence results in a death.

Under the new law it will be possible to prosecute companies where a gross failure in the way they were managed or organised resulted in a death. The offence is called corporate manslaughter in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and corporate homicide in Scotland.

Previously, companies had sometimes evaded prosecution when courts had been unable to determine the \'directing mind\' that led to the failure.

Under the new approach courts will look at management systems and practices across the organisation, providing a more effective means for prosecuting the worst corporate failures to manage Health, Safety, Ethical & Environmental properly.

The penalty, as in any serious health and safety case, is an unlimited fine, although guidelines suggest courts should impose a fine of 5% of the organisation\'s annual turnover as a starting point and go up to 10% for the worst cases.

Courts also have a name and shame power to compel the company to advertise their conviction in the appropriate press so that a message goes out to other businesses.