Posted By Graham Bullough The following scenario crops up from time to time during informal discussions between IOSH members in my area, and is worth airing on this forum for wider consideration and comment: After HSE is notified of an injury to one of your organisation's employees, an inspector 'phones you as a H & S adviser to ask if you have investigated the circumstances. If you say yes or will be investigating, he or she then asks for a copy of your investigation report. You are almost certainly under a duty to co-operate with the inspector whose extensive powers under section 20 of the 1974 Act include getting copies of documents in relation to any investigation, plus requiring any persons to provide facilities and assistance, etc. However, if your own investigation has rightly revealed shortcomings within your organisation and these are or will be recorded on your investigation report, you may feel that you are in an awkward position because you are giving HSE information which puts your employer in a bad light. In some cases it may save an inspector considerable time and effort while investigating for HSE, and perhaps even be used as a document in support of a subsequent prosecution of your employer. Questions about this topic include the following: 1) Is the practice of inspectors asking for copies of internal reports occasional, increasing or now widespread? In my own experience and that of my immediate colleagues, it seems to be occasional. 2) Does anyone happen to know if HSE has any formal policy about its inspectors asking for copies of internal investigation reports or are inspectors or their teams able to decide whether or not they make such requests in relation to their workload, etc? 3) For H & S advisers the most crucial question is does the possibility that HSE could ask for a copy of a report influence you as to what you include in your reports? My own response to question 3 is that my reports contain relevant information, including professional comments on what has been identified as having gone wrong plus what action has been or needs to taken to prevent further harm, etc. If this includes criticism of part of my employer's organisation or lack of it, so be it. I'm doing my job even though it might ruffle some management feathers. Bear in mind that organisations other than HSE may see your reports at some future date. These could include your organisation's legal advisers, insurers or even a judge in court. However, what do others think?

Posted By graeme12345 Graham. I do not think there is a legal requirement to actually investigate an accident at the moment,(maybe after the meltdown the Gov. will bring in the RIDDOR Investigation Regs. to bolster their increasingly empty coffers) it is just "good practise". If an inspector visits they can take away anything they so want for their purposes and if you refuse they can introduce you to your local copper. It would be prudent of all here to idenify exactly what powers an inspector has if they pay you a visit. You have to record accidents and normally on the form is an area where you can state how you think the accident happened. Regs are there to protect us only if employers assimilate them into their processes and procedures but they can bite back if they are not followed. You then amend your risk assessment because obviously it is not right because you have had an accident. If there was no accident investigation you cannot supply a report. only you know if an investiagtion has been carried out.

Posted By Sally Can I challenge the statement that 'obviously your risk assessment isn't right because an accident happened' If you have assessed something as low risk and it happens it doesn't necessarily follow that the assessment was wrong. My 'risk' of winning the lottery is very low (1 in 14 million) but most weeks it happens to someone. Sorry to take the post off topic abit but I think it is important.

Posted By graeme12345 shoudn't you caution Graham first Mitch

Posted By SteveD-M Just a quick note on legal privilege suggested in the earlier posts. A frequently asked question is – can I claim privilege over the information contained in a document? The answer is 'no' but if you work with a lawyer for the purpose of obtaining legal advice then it may be possible to create privilege in relation to your instructions to the lawyer. As a general rule, privilege over legal advice will only apply to communications between the client requesting the advice and the lawyer giving it. As a consequence, the request for advice from the client will be privileged, and the advice given by the lawyer, whether in-house or external, will be privileged. Improper use of labels such as 'legally privileged' can be counter-productive. Just putting onto a document a phrase containing the word 'privilege' does not work unless you follow the right process and, of course, it has to contain privileged information in the first place. Happy days....

Posted By Graham Bullough Just to add to my original posting in the light of some responses, I do not necessarily compile a written report after each investigation. Instead I just include on my handwritten notes and/or perhaps an e-mail briefly what I discussed and with whom. No doubt other advisers do the same. Thus, if there is no written report, you can't provide one! Also, reports can be likened to pieces of string: Thankfully there is no prescribed length or content for them. In some cases a few lines of text, perhaps accompanied by a photo or two, may be all that is necessary. My own organisation is a largish multi-faceted one with over 11,000 employees engaged in a wide range of activities. Moreover, it has considerable interaction with many non-employees and "customers". You've probably guessed by now that it's a local authority. However, my colleagues and I comprise a team of just 4 so sometimes we have to ditch tasks which are not urgent or essential. Sometimes when an inspector asks for a copy of a report, he or she may be wanting more information than available under RIDDOR in order to decide whether to commit scarce time to paying a visit and pursuing investigation. In some cases, the inspector might be happy to get confirmation that an organisation's advisers are "on the ball" and therefore decide that no further action by HSE is needed. As with most advisers, I guess that HSE inspectors try to make best use of their available working time with the result that some tasks, though desirable, get shelved. It may surprise some readers that my colleagues and I rarely ever make RIDDOR notifications or formal risk assessments! These are tasks for line managers who rightly have responsibility for them and what happens as regards all aspects, including health & safety, of their work domains. Our own role as advisers includes training, advising, supporting and monitoring managers about RIDDOR/internal reporting and making and acting on risk assessments.

Posted By R Joe Graham I agree with Bob's post, certainly for serious or potentially serious incidents that may lead to HSE considering prosecution. In addition, in my view an organisation like yours should really have a well-established protocol for dealing with serious incidents and how to handle the report, including getting early legal advice should be part of this. In the event of a fatality, this is essential. On this latter point, you might find the following link interesting: http://www.lge.gov.uk/lg...re/page.do?pageId=119849 (bottom of page) I'm not advocating for a moment that these considerations should affect the quality of the investigation as getting to the root causes and rectifying them is paramount, and our primary professional duty. But, in my experience we need to also recognise the wider legal elements of our role, the way that these has developed over recent years, and the interface with senior management in this regard. RJ

Posted By Stephen G Clarke As an ex-HSE Inspector, I wonder if this view helps: if I requested AT THE OUTSET, by telephone or letter, a copy of the company's investigation report, then I/HSE had already decided that a prosecution was extremely unlikely. The accident report would need to contain something pretty sensational to change that view. I wouldn't have wanted to reward such cooperation with a prosecution. If the accident looked serious enough for a prosecution, then I would visit first, and requests for the company's view would come later. If I requested a copy of the company's report at the outset and what I received seemed to just be a cover up, or didn't address the issues, then I would consider a change of approach and visit. I confess that now I'm on the other side of the fence, I won't necessarily send information which is warts and all in correspondence. But a report which was clearly inadequate, or claimed legal privelege, I think would have been counterproductive. Of course, the above comes with no guarantees about what any individual HSE Inspector would do. And I know of one other enforcement agency who acted completely against the spirit of the above. But that's how I would see things.

Posted By Graham Bullough Many thanks to all responders. As expected, there are understandably mixed views about 1) whether HSE inspectors should ask for copies of internal investigation reports and 2) what should be given to inspectors who ask. For my first 10 years in H&S I was an HSE inspector and don't recall being aware of bosses and colleagues ever asking safety officers (the usual job title in those days) for copies of their reports. db - What do the initials EMM mean? I can't readily think of a meaning, but this might be due to the fact that my years with HSE were in Scotland where PFs (procurators fiscal) rather than HSE inspectors conduct summary H&S cases in court.

Posted By Graham Bullough Bill Thanks for enlightening me and anyone else who didn't know. This prompts a suggestion for anyone devising a H&S related quiz for their branch or group to include the question "Who or what is an EMM?" Another suggestion is to ask contestants for the Latin motto of IOSH, and - for an extra point - give its English translation.

Posted By Robert K Lewis Barry I have known it work the other way round as well where the company's AR was used as evidence against tehm. Bob