From 6 April 2012, subject to approval from Parliament, changes to RIDDOR’s injury reporting requirements will come into effect.
Currently there is a requirement on a ‘responsible person’ to report over-three-day injuries however this is set to change so that only over-seven-day injuries will need to be reported. This means that work-related injuries where a worker has been incapacitated for more that seven consecutive days must be reported to the relevant enforcing authority. Such an injury must be reported within 15 days of the date of the accident, an increase on the current time limit of 10 days.
Incidents which lead to a worker being incapacitated for more than three consecutive days must still be recorded, for example in the employer accident book, but no longer require to be reported to the enforcing authority. The details which must be recorded are set out in Schedule 4 of the Regulations and include information such as the date and time of the incident; the name, occupation and nature of injury of the injured worker and the location where the incident occurred.
The Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 1995 apply a single set of reporting requirements to all work activities in Great Britain and in the offshore oil and gas industry. The main aim of the Regulations is to generate reports to the Health and Safety Executive and local authorities and thus make them aware of individual incidents and also show where and how risks and trends can arise.
The updated Health and Safety Executive guidance on RIDDOR can be found at http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/priced/l73.pdf
