A company in England has been fined for failing to promptly tell authorities it was working with high-hazard infectious agents.
Lab 21 Healthcare, a company that operated a high-containment laboratory in Axminster, was fined £52,000 ($70,600). Similar action was taken against the site’s previous operator Omega Diagnostics, which was fined £35,000 ($47,500) in May 2025.
Both companies worked with high hazard infectious organisms such as Salmonella typhi — which can cause typhoid fever — without providing legally required advanced notification to the Health and Service Executive (HSE), the national regulator for workplace health and safety. Typhoid fever causes potentially severe disease and can spread to the community.
Guilty pleas
Lab21 Healthcare was fined $70,600 and ordered to pay £26,000 ($35,300) in costs at Exeter Crown Court earlier this month.
Lab 21 Healthcare, a non-trading subsidiary of Novacyt, earlier pleaded guilty at Exeter Magistrates Court to health and safety charges relating to operations at the site between June 2018 and April 2019.
Omega Diagnostics was prosecuted following a guilty plea to the charges it faced. The company stopped operations after identifying the failure to notify its work with high hazard infectious agents. The company was fined $47,500 and ordered to pay almost £27,000 ($36,700) in costs at Exeter Magistrates Court in May 2025. Offences relate to Omega South West, a business previously owned by Omega Diagnostics and sold in 2018.
HSE inspector Mark Cuff visited the site in April 2019 and an investigation identified failures he described as “both foreseeable and readily avoidable”.
Issues included key safety equipment not being adequately maintained or tested frequently enough to confirm it was working properly and safely, while the poor condition of the lab meant that safe and effective disinfection was not possible.
Motivation for regulatory breach
As well as Salmonella typhi, other risks included exposure to formaldehyde gas, which was used for disinfecting the laboratory. The lab was situated on an industrial estate near to a gym and a bakery.
According to HSE, Lab 21 Healthcare continued the high-hazard work over a period of about seven months, before making the agency aware, ceasing its operations, and taking actions to fix shortcomings.
HSE guidance states that employers must report work with high hazard infectious agents and take steps to adequately control exposure.
Cuff said both companies failed to notify HSE of their work with high hazard pathogens.
“In the case of Lab 21 Healthcare, the company was not only aware of the relevant legal requirements, and its shortfall in meeting them, but also chose to ignore them over an extended period; the motivations for which were both commercially driven and the avoidance of regulatory scrutiny. Although there was no release from the facility or actual harm, the likely public expectation in such circumstances is that the companies should be held accountable,” he said.
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