Posted By john thos 147 I have read several threads that didcuss what should and shouldn't be reported to RIDDOR. A prime example would be the recent thread involving an employee who on reflection decided what could have caused an injury to his foot. Personnally I would report all incidents/accidents in line with RIDDOR guidelines includeing those that are recorded retrospectively and which sometimes may not have happened as the employee states. i would simply report what i believed into the relevant section of the RIDDOR making it very clear what had happened and especially referencing complny policy in regards to reporting immediately. I dealt with an incident a couple of years ago which was similar to the thread mentioned above . At the time i was pretty new to my position ,anyway i refused to let the employee write in the acciddent book as as it was about a week aftre he had said the accident happened. To cut a long story short the employee went away rather disgruntled. An hour later i recieved a phone call saying that the aforementioned employee had had the "same accident again" recieved the same injury and had gone home sick. Basically he got what he wanted which was an entry into the accident book. To counteract this we now allow employee,s to backdate the enties that are put in the accident book but they must clearly state the date of the entry. I also developed a discomfort report form this allows the employee to state what is wrong with them how long they have had the discomfort and how they believe the discomfort was caused i.e playing football, at home, or god forbid at work. The reason i did this is that a lot of injuries are not accidents they are incidents and therefore i think that they should be treated differntly. a good example of this would be RSI's usually not caused by one single act but often recorded in accident books with a singular incident quoted as being the cause. anybody's views on the above would be appreciatted

Posted By john thos 147 The point I am trying to make is what is the differnce ( i.e what are the repercussions of reporting something that wasn't reportable if any ) I can RIDDOR quicker than i can phone and when reading the thread i have mentioned they clearly state within the answers that the HSE pretty much say " report it anyway to be on the safe side"

Posted By CFT John With the greatest of respect to your thoughts ... I believe one of the key issues being missed here - is not one of statistics and accident frequency rates dar-de-dar et cetera. I don't agree with a carte-blanche attitude towards reporting, I don't believe the other thread you refer to should be reported either, simply put - if there is no proof to show it happened at work, its almost certainly not reportable. So to the key issue I mentioned earlier then. Under-writers will be delighted that organisations will follow the conditions of their policy conditions to the letter, but won't be best pleased with potential civil claims being taken against the company - when they shouldn't have been established as a work-place incident in the first-place. But then, what the heck am I talking about? No employee would ever try to claim an injury occurred at work when it clearly did not! There are ways to establish authenticity in most (but not all cases), and for me I won't be adopting the 'report-the-lot' just to be on the safe-side. Safe-side of what exactly? My opinion for what it's worth based on many conversations with employees claiming an accident occured at work - and meeting with under-writers to discuss this very issue. CFT

Posted By J Fennel Hi John, My advice to managers is to seek clarification from me if they are unable to comprehend the RIDDOR reporting requirements themselves, which to be honest can be confusing when it comes to the three day rule and employees scheduled days off. I think a lot of employers are nervous about reporting because they know it will in most cases result in a call from their local EHO/HSE inspector. I have no issue with that in the most part, but I do get frustrated with the grey areas and personal opinions that surround enforcement of H&S regs. A lead authority would solve this issue but most environmental health departments want to avoid the associated paperwork that comes with this, meaning I have to constantly reiterate our own policies and procedures when my time would be better served elsewhere. Anyway, I digress and in closing would presume that as insurers always want to know RIDDOR numbers, many employers may also fear falsely inflating this number and subsequently increasing their premiums. J

Posted By john thos 147 In the time that i have been here the only time that the HSe have contacted us in regards to an accident was when a 3 day accident ( A bit of dirt in someone's eye) was reported as a fatality in that instance they contaced us for clarification. ( P.S they were happy with the explanation. You are far more likely to have the HSE turn up because of complaints from disgruntled employee's

Posted By J Fennel I know HSE is a lot busier than EHO's who are responsible for our work environment.......and in my experience they will visit for at least 7 out of 10 RIDDOR's J

Posted By Pete48 The date and time of the initial report is irrelevant to whether it is a spurious report or not. Any and all accident reports by employees should be treated as such. Once an employer receives a report they should investigate it and determine the facts. From those facts the significance is established. One part of that may be a report under RIDDOR, another could be the rejection of the accident as a work related event, another might be that the accident happened at work but not as described or at the time reported by the employee. Any employer who simply reports under RIDDOR to be "on the safe side" does themselves, their employees and the compilers of national statistics a great dis-service. Any employer who accuses an employee of being economical with the truth is crazy to do so without any evidence to back that allegation. I don't accept that a fear of reporting or the impact on business is as widespread as some would have it. Any statistic can be explained if it is seen as critical to success.

Posted By Ron Hunter John, as I read things the accepted approach in your Organisation would appear to allow employees to record potentially spurious incident details without challenge or contemporaneous investigation. Irrespective of any RIDDOR issues, this surely leaves the door wide open for future civil claims?

Posted By john thos 147 Beloe are extracts from the responses given. I know HSE is a lot busier than EHO's who are responsible for our work environment.......and in my experience they will visit for at least 7 out of 10 RIDDOR's As stated in my answer this is not the case here most accidents that are reported to the HSE have clear cut causes and are of a minor nature. In my view they wouldn't warrant a visit from the HSE. I am also a regular visitor to the SHP site (In court) and imagine by reading some of the cases that they have much more serious issues to deal with The HSE have a duty to investigate all complaints made but they do not have a duty to investigate all accidents. I never said that they did and as stated above i imagine that they are more interested in more serious accidents/deaths and dangerous occurances. As to the original post...why report just to be on the safe side? That is paperwork you are clogging up the inspectors desks with!! To me those that report because they don't know if it is reportable or not are just displaying incompetence. If I told every one of my clients to report every accident (just to be on the safe side) that they ran past me then I would be doing them a diservice. Below is the original title of the tread it would have helped if you had read it properly. MY point was why do people worry about if something is reportable or not, was based on another thread which came down in my view to t somebody protecting their statistics. in my view based on the thread it should have been reportable. It is highly unlikely that the employee would know complexities of RIDDOR. Anybody who knows the system and was to make a spurious claim would have ensured that the accident was immediately put in the accident book. I am certainly not saying report every accident what i am saying is if an accident comes under RIDDOR but then on a TECNICALOTY you have doubts about reporting it then you should ( Please read the thread that i have mentioned. why does everybody have such concerns about reporting) Any employer who simply reports under RIDDOR to be "on the safe side" does themselves, their employees and the compilers of national statistics a great dis-service. John, as I read things the accepted approach in your Organisation would appear to allow employees to record potentially spurious incident details without challenge or contemporaneous investigation. Irrespective of any RIDDOR issues, this surely leaves the door wide open for future civil claims? John, as I read things the accepted approach in your Organisation would appear to allow employees to record potentially spurious incident details without challenge or contemporaneous investigation. Irrespective of any RIDDOR issues, this surely leaves the door wide open for future civil claims? How you managed to come to this conclusion i do not know. i thought it was a simple question but in response : As an employer you have no control of what goes in the accident book as it should be readily available, therefore an employee if they so wanted can enter anything they want . any way that is what we do here after the accident is entered in the accident book it is then down to me to investigate ir. At this point it does not matter to me in real terms when the accident was reported. As you can see from one of my responses that an employee can simply re-have the accident or a similar accident if so inclined. When i investigate the accident I will if necessary challenge the employee if i believe there are inconsistencies in their statement. If necessary I will reconstruct the accident and video it. or take step by step pictures. if the employee was found to be lying i would confront them with this. As an ex union rep i have seen the heavy hand of poor management whereby they simply want to brush all accidents under the carpet and blame the employee. I actually have a good rapport with the employees here on the shop floor which is something that i am keen to maintain as i believe it helps me on a day to day basis. They can come to me with any problems they have and i will strive to sort them out quickly.They in turn appreciate the fact that i listen and act on their recommendations. As present we are half way through the year and have had one reportable accident Islips/trips//falls. I believe that this shows i do not simply report things for the sake of. But as usual on here peeps can't read a question without trying to put the poster down . Do you remember the acronym RTFQ.

Posted By clairel John, If you are going to mix in quotes with your own words then it may be helpul to put the quotes in italica or even quotation marks. Your post is very confusing as it stands.

Posted By john thos 147 I thought my original psot/question was quite clear. I also wrote an example of my own experience's i.e the person who re-had an accident to get it into the accident book. In regards to being fined for not reporting. When i was a shop steward i accussed and prooved that my employer was not reporting under RIDDOR. I reported this to the HSE their response was that, They would only act on serial offenders. Which is a fair enough response bearing in mind that people do make genuine mustakes. But i doubt that there would be enough employees checking that their employer was reporting under RIDDOR and therefore highly unlikely that serial offenders would come to light