Posted By Peter Harvey Thank you for this and an interesting read it is to.

Posted By Adrian Watson Dear all, I've major reservations about this proposal, even though, I believe that is a good idea in principle. The reservations I've got are: 1. How is the right "not to incriminate yourself" to be protected? I don’t believe that investigations will be full and frank if a person believes that investigation reports may be used as evidence on non compliance. 2. If the investigation report may be used in common law tort actions, I fear that they will quickly become "he did it...it was his fault" reports. As such they will be of no benefit, as they will not be full and frank. 3. The proposed duty is to investigate RIDDOR accidents, dangerous occurances, or diseases. If these are important, should they not be investigated by HSE/LA's, or is this a cost saving exercise? 4. Many firms do not have persons competent to investigate accidents and dangerous occurrences, let alone diseases that are a different ball game. 5. The proposed duty is to investigate, not to carry out a suitable and sufficient investigation. Therefore if I make any investigations, which identify what happened, but make no attempt to determine why, then I've carried out investigations, albeit they are worthless. 6. If this duty is to have any meaningful, should not the duty be to ensure that a competent person carries out a suitable and sufficient investigation of all incidents that could have or did result in a accident, dangerous occurrance or disease to determine what happened and what measures are required to prevent a similar incident. In summary I don’t believe that this duty will have the desired effect, unless safeguards are put into place and persons are properly trained.

Posted By Jay Joshi The proposals - which would require an amendment to present health and safety law (Management of Health & Safety at Work Regs) - would require employers to: 1)Investigate all reportable incidents to find out how they happened and how they might be prevented in future; 2)Keep a record that an investigation has been carried out and that its conclusions have been taken into account in revising the workplace risk assessment. Such records would be kept for a minimum of three years and could be subject to scrutiny by the HSE and its inspectors. The consultation asks whether the proposed duty to investigate should be extended to non-reportable accidents, diseases and dangerous occurrences as well. The HSE would provide guidance on how to implement an effective investigations process. At present, there is no explicit law which requires employers to investigate the causes of workplace incidents, although there are duties under some health and safety law which may lead employers to undertake investigations. The HSC published a discussion document in 1998 to generate a debate on whether more should be done to encourage incident investigation. The results of this exercise were clear: that there should be a change in the law through amendment of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations to introduce a new duty to investigate reportable accidents, dangerous occurrences and diseases; and to ensure that the lessons learned are taken into account when revising workplace risk assessments.

Posted By Ken Taylor Whilst welcoming the proposals, I wonder whether a publicised duty to investigate reportable incidents will tend to give employers a 'message' that other incidents do not have to be given attention. From my past college days, I seem to remember something about a triangle and the need to address the 'base' minor injuries and near-misses. Perhaps some reinforcement will be needed in published HSE guidance?

Posted By Adrian Watson Richard, Why investigate only failures resulting in large losses? Many near misses and smaller incidents can show failures before real damage results! Regards