Hi all , Looking for some information regarding an incident at work that caused an amputation to the tip of an employees right index finger after initial surgery was not a success This is not the question , the question is if injured employee asks for a copy of the incident report is the employee entitled to a copy or should this document only be handed to the companies insurers to deal with any correspondence regarding a claim . Also the said employee is also a safety rep and under the regulations is entitled to view reports but would this just be to review a report and not have a copy of the document and any supporting evidence Any information you provide and legal evidence of this matter would be greatly appreciated Mike

No nothing to hide just wanted advice on the legal stance as i have an obligation to the company as well as the employee . I want to do whats best for both parties

I think it is almost impossible to stop the injured person seeing the accident report. You will have to make a full discloser if it goes to court and you will probably disclose it during negotiations for compensation if it doesn’t. There is also the Freedom of Information Act.

The organisation I work for has a policy for this that I fully endorse. If a request is made to see the accident report then the report is made available for the IP / safety rep on site. No copy can bemade and it cannot be taken off site at that point. In the event that legal proceedings ensue ie an ELI claim then the accident report will be disclosed as part of the normal disclosure process without delay. The reason for this is that the report is a company document and must be controlled in the same way that all company documents are controlled. If a copy leaves site the company must be confident that there is strict control over who has access to the information in that document. As part of the disclosure process the document is controlled by the courts and so confidence is maintained. Giving out copies to anyopne who asks that confidence is lost.

Be wary what information you supply. If you supply a full accident report and have identified some organisational shortfalls or breaches of the law you may discriminate yourself - in which would prejudice your case. In law information cane be protected from disclosure, this is called 'legal privilege' . This has to be declared by your solicitor and DPA does not apply. I would supply the initial accident report and the initial investigation report (without any actions or recommendations). I hope this is helpful.

For 'legal privilelge' to be cited, inter alia, the investigation report must be commisioned by the solicitor representing the company or insurance company for the sole reason of defending a claim. Anyway, whatever happened to the positive safety culture principles? Open, honest, transparent...surely these are the virtues we as practitioners should be promoting.

Sorry if his opens up an old and commonly discussed issue but the content of the accident form whether it goes to the injured person or their solicitors is relevant here. In a very recent case, we had an employee injured while manual handling (cut hand). With all my normal intentions, the form we completed recorded that he had received accredited training, been provided with gloves, etc and in the improvement action section we stated that he will be reminded to observe the procedures he was taught during the training and to wear his gloves for such tasks (he wasn't wearing them at the time of the incident). This was severely criticised by our own insures who have indicated that they will not be defending the claim. They said that the wording above could be construed as an admission that we knew he wasn't observing his training or wearing his gloves. The advice we were given is that we should basically have recorded something along the lines of - "The injured person had received suitable and sufficient training for this task and at the time of the injury he was not working in accordance with the training received" or similar wording. I think I will be tempted to utilise the BLAME approach in future!

Thanks Ray. He was off for exactly 12 weeks then returned (his full sick pay entitlement is 12 weeks per year surprise surprise). You are right about the insures but we (our Bursar mainly) are asking them to defend it as it sends out all the wrong messages to other employees.