About Safeguard CourtBase

Safeguard CourtBase is a searchable database which aims to include every successful prosecution under the Health and Safety in Employment Act and related statutes and regulations. Also included are some cases in which the prosecutor failed to secure a conviction. It has been developed by Safeguard and is updated regularly.

Currently CourtBase contains cases back to 1996, with some from earlier years. Soon we will have completed entry of all cases back to 1993.

To gain access to the substantive information you must subscribe. Subscribers to the Standard service gain access to the summary text as published in Safeguard magazine. Subscribers to the Premium service also gain access to the original source documents (where they exist) from which the summaries were written, eg court decisions and sentencing notes, OSH summaries of fact and returns on prosecution.

Key subscriber benefits:

Training/Induction
Gather relevant, high-impact material as the basis for attention-grabbing training and induction presentations and reference material.

Motivation
Help build your case for targeted health & safety spending by locating relevant prosecutions in your industry sector and involving your hazards. An effective way of gaining the attention of budget-holders!

Screening
Would you like to be able to check if OSH has successfully prosecuted any of your potential subcontractors? Now you can.

Advising
Swiftly research relevant prosecutions to boost the timeliness and quality of your advice to clients.

What information is held about each prosecution?

Information about each prosecution is in three parts:

1. The meta data, which describes things like the defendant's industry sector, the kind of injury risk involved, and so on. Safeguard has generated the meta data itself.

2. The summary, a brief digest of a case written in plain English by Safeguard and published in Safeguard magazine over the years.

3. Any original source document(s), which are supplied by the Department of Labour, the courts and other agencies, and have been used by Safeguard to write the summaries. Older prosecutions do not have these as they have only been supplied in electronic form since 2001.