12 October 2009
Paul Reeve

The ultimate aim of health and safety management is, of course, to prevent harm due to accidents or ill-health. But if an accident happens, companies have a duty to be ready with first aid or emergency care, to record the accident, and to report significant injuries or incidents to the safety authorities. 

Under the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations (RIDDOR), you must report some types of injury or "dangerous occurrence" to the HSE's Incident Contact Centre (www.hse.gov.uk/riddor/index.htm or tel: 0845 300 9923) even for businesses regulated by local authorities rather than the HSE.

Under RIDDOR, employers must report a work-related death, significant injury, an occupational disease or a dangeous occurrence (serious types of "near miss") involving employees, wherever they are working; while work-related deaths or significant injuries to members of the public or self-employed people, and any serious near misses must be reported by whoever is in charge of the premises where they happen.

More specifically, RIDDOR requires the employer (or anyone controlling premises) to report:

• significant injuries - these are defined as major injuries, over-three-day injuries (non-major injuries where the injured person is away from work or can't perform their normal duties for more than three consecutive days);
• injuries to the public or people not at work, where they are taken from the scene of an accident to hospital;
• various work-related diseases; or
• some types of dangerous occurrence.

Death, major injury or a dangerous occurrence must be reported without delay.

Accidents should be reported as soon as possible, even when they happen out of working hours, if several workers or a member of the public have been injured, or where there is a major health and safety disruption, the sort that involves evacuation, road closure or a large number of people sent to hospital.

An over-three-day injury to an employee must be reported to the Contact Centre within 10 days (remember, it can take four days to assess if the accident is reportable).

Harm due to physical violence at work is also reportable under RIDDOR. (The full list of RIDDOR-reportable major injuries, occupational diseases and dangerous occurrences is at: www.hse.gov.uk/riddor/guidance.htm)

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What you must report

RIDDOR-reportable major injuries include:

• fracture, other than to fingers, thumbs and toes
• dislocation of the shoulder, hip, knee or spine
• any loss of sight, even temporary
• injury resulting from an electric shock/burn leading to unconsciousness, or requiring resuscitation or admittance to hospital for more than 24 hours
• any other injury such as hypothermia, heat-induced illness or unconsciousness or requiring resuscitation or admittance to hospital for more than 24 hours
• acute illness requiring medical treatment, or loss of consciousness due to absorption of a substance by inhalation, ingestion or through the skin.

Reportable diseases
If a company is notified by a doctor (that is, not by the employee themselves) that an employee has a reportable work-related disease, then this must be reported to the enforcing authority.

Reportable diseases include:

• some skin diseases such as occupational dermatitis and skin cancer
• lung diseases, including occupational asthma, asbestosis and mesothelioma
• infections such as: leptospirosis, hepatitis, legionellosis and tetanus
• other conditions such as occupational cancer, some musculoskeletal disorders and hand-arm vibration syndrome.

Dangerous occurrences
RIDDOR-reportable dangerous occurences are a category of "near miss" that must be reported by law. Under RIDDOR, dangerous occurrences include:

• collapse, overturning or failure of load-bearing parts of lifts and lifting equipment
• a vessel or associated pipework collapsing, bursting or exploding
• plant or equipment coming into contact with overhead power lines
• electrical short circuit or overload causing fire or explosion
• collapse or partial collapse of a scaffold more than five metres high
• a dangerous substance being conveyed by road becoming involved in a fire or released
• unintended collapse of: any building or structure under construction, alteration or demolition where more than five tonnes of material falls
• explosion or fire causing suspension of normal work for more than 24 hours
• accidental release of any substance which may damage health.

The last category would include, for example, a significant release of asbestos inside a building. While the dangerous occurrences shown above are certainly near misses, there are other types of near-miss incidents that are not reportable to the authorities (see main text). Even so, it is very useful to keep a record of and investigate all near misses/near hits.

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By the book

As well as RIDDOR, the Social Security (Claims and Payments) Regulations require employers to record accidents that might entitle an employee to benefit.

This is easily done by recording accidents in a standard BI 510 accident book. You need to keep this book in an accessible place, and all staff should know where it is and what it's for. 

Though RIDDOR-reportable accidents should be recorded in BI 510, minor accidents or incidents (which tend to be most of the entries in an accident book) aren't covered by RIDDOR. So, not all of the entries in BI 510 have to be reported to the authorities.

While BI 510 allows the employer to record accidents at work, it's really there to help employees. Anyone who is hurt at work should record what happened and when, and their injury. If the employee subsequently requires treatment, time off or benefits then the accident book provides essential evidence. The book's other function is to help the employer prevent further accidents. Provided the accident book is properly filled in, it gives a valuable insight into workplace risks and it can reveal patterns of accidents, prompting you to review safety measures.

Keeping separate notes about any workplace incident is also useful, if there's any doubt about the employee's description of what happened, for example.
Near hit reports might be along the following lines:

• "administrator was crossing road outside when a lorry from the company next door ran right in front of her and nearly hit her"
• "large electric motor fell from racking next to foreman"
• "Worker did not buckle up in cherry picker and nearly fell out"
• "electrician was working in a confined space next to dangerous machinery and found that power was not switched off".

In slightly different circumstances, all these near hits could have killed or caused serious injury. Any business that has a lot of near hits has serious underlying safety problems.

It helps if one person is responsible for keeping accident and near hit records, and for reporting any serious incidents to the authorities, if need be. This person should summarise incident reports for colleagues, so they can take proper action.

Look into any significant accident or incident at work, or any repetitive minor incidents. Involve line managers and employees, taking an honest look at the situation leading up to what happened, not just the incident itself (addressing the "root causes" can be very effective; some accidents can be traced back to poor training, for example).

A sure-footed response to recording and dealing with incidents will protect staff, help productivity and may reduce other business losses, such as damage to stock. With this in mind, ask managers for suggestions on how to improve safety.

The good news is that an effective approach to managing health and safety reduces the chance of having to record, report or deal with these incidents in the first place.

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Accident reporting basics

By law, businesses must:

• report RIDDOR-reportable accidents and incidents to the enforcing authority
• allow all employees to record workplace accidents
• see if an accident or incident affects the company's risk assessment
• have clear arrangements for what to do if there is an accident
• bring in new safety measures if need be.

SMEs are also advised to:

• record any 'near hit' incidents
• look into the circumstances behind accidents or incidents, to help identify the best way to avoid a repetition.

Effective health and safety management reduces the chances of having to do any of the above.

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For more information, the HSE has a free summary of the RIDDOR requirements (MISC769) and the BI 510 accident reporting book (ISBN 0717626032, £4.75 plus VAT from www.hsebooks.co.uk) also contains information on RIDDOR and the Health and Safety (First Aid) Regulations 1981.

We will look at first aid and basic emergency provisions in a future article.

Categories:
Safety, Features, Accident reporting / RIDDOR