Accident Reporting in the Workplace

Accidents and incidents aren’t nice, but they do happen. What’s most important for you as a business owner is having a robust accident reporting policy in place. That means if an accident in the workplace does occur, you have everything you need in place to properly produce a report and do everything you can to prevent something happening again.

But you don’t have to go through that process on your own. Partnering with us means you’ll have 24/7 access to our experts, who can work with you to confidently create safe working practices.

We’ll let you know when incidents need escalating – and why. We’ll show you how to report incidents – legally. We’ll put measures in place to prevent the same thing happening twice. And if there’s a serious incident on your site, we’ll support you through the entire process.

RIDDOR reporting

RIDDOR stands for the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 2013. Under RIDDOR, employers, the self-employed and anyone who’s in control of a business’ premises have a legal obligation to report specified incidents and accidents at work to the Health and Safety Executive.

Accident reporting in the workplace: the law

When it comes to accident reporting, your legal obligations are governed by the Management of Health and Safety at Work (MHSW) Regulations 1999 and the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations (RIDDOR) 2013.

As we touched on earlier, to be compliant with RIDDOR, there are specified workplace incidents you must report to the HSE.

The MHSW Regulations, however, cover all the stages you should be taking to prevent incidents and accidents in the first place. How? In a nutshell, the MHSW requires you to assess and manage all risks that arise from any work-related activity.

So, this means taking all reasonable steps to ensure incidents and accidents are avoided in the first place by:

• Appointing a competent person and/or advisor to assist with the implementation and management of safety within the workplace
• Conducting, communicating and reviewing risk assessments
• Drawing up method statements to demonstrate your safe working practices
• Putting Health & Safety handbooks and policies in place – that are clearly communicated, understood and acknowledged
• Ensuring employees are up-to-date with relevant Health & Safety training
• Providing employees with appropriate Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)
• Making sure all your equipment and machinery is fit for purpose, regularly maintained and fitted with things like machine guarding where necessary
• Only allowing employees to carry out tasks if they’re competent to do so