Hi Ian, While not necessarily and "accident I would record it as a first aid treatment. I suppose the reporting of days lost would depend if the dust was reasonably foreseeable and should have been managed i.e. is dust raised on the site or is it just a natural occurrence. Probably just one of those things sent to test us and ruin our figures! Kevin

Phillips, Is the yard particularly dusty as a by-product of your business operations? Could it be assumed reasonable to 'damp down' the dust periodically with a bowser / hose etc? Simon

I should have added that the two things in the title of your post aren’t mutually exclusive, neither should they be at odds with each other. Your obligations under RIDDOR are just that – a legal obligation to report those injuries, diseases, incidents etc that are reportable as defined under the regulations, regardless of any in house initiatives.

I. Yes. 2. Yes. 3. Yes. Three good reasons why 'zero harm' targets and associated notice boards are a load of...

Does the dust have anything to do with undertaking / activities of the company in any way ? This would seem to be the key question. If yes then it would be reportable (if also over 7 days), if no then it would not be. Like so many other questions about RIDDOR, I suspect the HSE would not be that interested in it.

Well that confirms what I think. 1. Beware of RIDDOR especially when using them as a KPI . Just because something is a RIDDOR it does not follow that it is a more significant incident. 2. Zero accident targets are plain daft- they just encourage under reporting. Better measurement might be how quickly incidents can be investigated and the actions required closed off. It shows that you an active approach to H&S. 3. Targets/KPI should be leading indicators such as H&S training completed etc

As I've said before Zero LTA/DAC accidents should be what you are aiming your continuous improvement plan. You can't apply the same ethos to minor accidents because it does drive reporting underground, even with an open safety culture, and that reduces your chances of acting to stop the 'big ones'. As for using it as an indicator I believe it's valuable but only if your organisation is mature enough to understand what the accident is indicating to you. Not merely that zero reportables is good, reportable bad. That's how you end up with Texas city. It should only be one of your metrics and not necessarily the most important. Others we measure are safety reps inspection findings, near misses, process safety failures, safe and unsafe acts, safety training in date, competency matrices, etc One thing I know is that we look at what we measure so it needs to be a balance. If you are looking at the original question and trying to figure out how you can avoid reporting it you certainly aren't in a place where you could implement a zero recordables policy.

Surely your management systems need to be robust or the point is lost and target unacheivable anyway?

In addition to the point that ' Zero LTA/DAC accidents should be what you are aiming your continuous improvement plan.' Wouldn't the KPI be better being a continual reduction in LTA/Accidents as part of a continuous improvement plan? An example being, we have reduced our Accident/LTA numbers from 169/19 in the late 1990's to 20/3 for 2011, showing a continual improvement, obviously. However we have plateaued at around the 2011 figures for some time. We have demonstrated continual improvement through the severity of the reported injuries, where there used to be LTA'S with absences of weeks or months from some quite severe injuries, the severity of all reports have reduced signifiantly to days, weeks at most. It is worth noting that our company categorises LTAS as injuirses being severe enough to keep poeple off work from the next day (why, I have no idea but thats not my call.) Our continuous safety improvement requires year on year reductions, we would rather have accidents/incidents reported (we operate a no blame culture) than suffer the non reporting that could be possible if the zero accident policy was in place. Not saying this is the perfect policy, far from it, but it does have many bonuses across the management system and safety culture as a whole.

Wouldn't the KPI be better being a continual reduction in LTA/Accidents as part of a continuous improvement plan?' Yes, a continual drive toward reducing accidents, particularly those which are serious is good practice. That said, targets should be realistic and achievable. Many organisations are finding that their AFRs are bottoming out, year on year improvements are difficult to achieve - this must be recognised. Unfortunately many organisations are now resorting to desperate measures in order to reduce still further accidents. Some of these practices wittingly or unwittingly are driving the reporting of accidents underground, such is the pressure being applied. By way of an analogy, many organisations use targets for near miss reporting. X amount of near misses must be reported within a given timescale. This is an absolute nonsense as the workforce start reporting incidental things or make them up in order to hit the target. Moreover, the workforce (who are not stupid) start losing respect for health and safety initiatives because even they can see artificial processes which are being driven by management.

Picked this up yesterday and it reminded me of this discussion line: "The operator also highlighted that since 1978, more than 20 million people have visited the castle without a single reported accident, near miss, or complaint." http://www.shponline.co....-000-in-moat-death-trial We have a lot less visitors than this and I could show a court (or HSE inspector) dozens of examples of minor accidents, incidents or reports of near misses that we have recorded, considered and either actioned or decided not to action, all done without fuss or excess time-wasting. Certainly a defence I'd prefer over zero accident.