Accident reporting

Incidents are never nice. And, no matter how many measures you have in place, sometimes there’s just no stopping them from happening.

What’s important though, is putting the right processes in place to avoid them as best you can, reporting the right amount – when needed, and doing everything in your power to prevent them from happening again. Sounds simpler than it is, right?

Well, that’s where we come in. When it comes to Health & Safety, we’re the experts in our arena. We’ll work with you to 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.

And the buck doesn’t stop there. With us by your side, you’ll have an ever-growing list of online training courses at your fingertips, around the clock access to industry-leading Health & Safety support experts, and a means to easily log any incidents on our online management platform, Atlas.

To find out more about our Health & Safety support, simply fill in the form below.

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 workplace incidents.

The seven reportable categories under RIDDOR are:

• Deaths
• Specified injuries
• Over seven-day injuries
• Injuries to people not at work
• Some work-related diseases
• Dangerous occurrences
• Gas incidents.

So, not every incident is reportable, and it’s important to know the difference between what does and doesn’t need reporting. If you unnecessarily report an incident or accident, you could open the floodgates for enforcing authorities to put a magnifying glass on your business.

For a closer look at each of the categories and for some examples of RIDDOR-reportable accidents, incidents and diseases, head here.

Non-reportable incidents

Here at Citation, we’d always recommend logging incidents and accidents that aren’t reportable under RIDDOR too. Why? The reason’s threefold really.

Firstly, it’ll help to prevent similar instances from happening again in the future by putting the spotlight on your internal processes and risk assessment compliance proceedures, which’ll improve your business’ overall safety.

Secondly, it gives you an audit trail of what happened to fall back on if an employee goes on to lodge a claim against you. And thirdly, it gives you something to refer to if an enforcing authority requests supporting documents during an inspection.

For a step-by-step look at how to report an accident, check out our six-stage guide on it here.

Accident reporting: 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, you must report specified workplace incidents.

The MHSW Regulations, however, cover all the stages you should be taking to prevent incidents or accidents from needing to be reported in the first place. How? Because, 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.

How Atlas can help you

Whether it’s a papercut, fatality, near miss or dangerous occurrence, our online management platform – Atlas – makes accident reporting simple.

It provides you with a step-by-step incident log facility, where you can easily log everything from photos and witness statements to relevant risk assessments and training certificates. And, if it’s RIDDOR-reportable, it’ll take you directly to the HSE’s reporting system and give you access to lots of guidance documents.

Slipped up? We’ll support you

If you’re worried your business has got gaps open that could lead to an accident or near miss, then we’re here for you.

Our Health & Safety experts will help you to put the right policies, processes and procedures in place. We’ll provide you with unlimited access to online training courses. We’ll be on the other end of the phone 24/7. We’ll take you through the reporting process. We’ll come out and visit you once a year (or more if required), and we’ll do so much more too.

For more information on how much we can help with your business’ Health & Safety, get in touch with the team on 0345 844 1111 or hello@citation.co.uk.