We recently had one of drivers making a delivery to a customer and whilst our driver was parked on a loading dock and in the back of the trailer moving pallets a third party van was manouvering in the customer's yard and they shunted the front of our parked vehicle causing the driver to fall over and injur their knee. The driver has been off for 40 days now. we reported as a RIDDOR as we should but im wondering whether we should be racking up all these lost days for something that wasnt our fault? i.e. there is nothing practically we could have done differntly to avoid the accident. just wondering if anyone has a policy on this and if it is based on any HSE or industry guidance. thanks.

The time was lost due to an injury at work and this is not an admission of fault (although it may feel like it).

You might be thinking about going down the road of only counting lost time when it does seem that some blame may lie within your company.

That is a bad road.

The worst thing about this road is that you will no longer be able to do objective and impartial investigations of incidents because there will be so much pressure to assign blame elsewhere and avoid it in certain quarters.

So, keep it objective and say that you count all time lost, with no arguments.  Then you can say that counting it isn't an admission of fault and you won't have to have stupid arguments about blame every single time (where it might be a lot less clear than this case).

Another bad thing about this road is that counting some other lost time does then seem to imply fault, which might then be used against you in ways you hadn't intended.

A record of lost time will help to explain the expenditure on overtime or hiring a relief driver.

Accurate records can also ensure the potential for future miss-understandings can be avoided.

Another "totally hypothetical" scenario.

Company with global operations has pretty graph showing a clear downward trend in Lost Time Injury Frequency Rates.

An explosion happens at one of company's Client's sites. Kills and injures a lot of people mostly employed by said company. Cause of explosion definitely NOT down to said company but perhaps company should have had its workforce further from the hazard.

Company produces two versions of pretty graph. With and without the impact of explosion. One graph has a huge spike, the other shows continued downward trend. Pick graph according to who is asking for statistical information.

Holliday's approach gets a tick from me. Transparency INCLUDING as regards supply chain. Many Contractors choose to avoid consideration of what is happening in their supply chain who often perform more of the higher risk activities. 

Problem for Holliday's employer (and others applying similar approach) is that Clients may not recognise that they could be comparing apples with pears.

Edited by user 21 November 2024 11:04:49(UTC)  | Reason: Typo

Thanks all for taking the time to post.

I see your points. In all the years we have recorded incidents that result in lost time, the investigations usually identify organisational issues as the root cause and we don't have an issue with accepting fault if it's ours.

Although there is no requirement to record lost time, organisations typically do it to measure performance and this data is often requested through the supply/customer chain. They don't drill into the data any more than that so it does feel like a bitter pill to swallow on this one.I used to work for a well known swedish construction company and i do remember a similar scenario where they didnt log the lost time on the basis that it wasn't the organisations fault. when i queried it they sent through some HSE guidance but i cant for the life of me remember what document it was.

I don't think that argument works, for the following reason.

Even if an injury is 100% the fault of someone other than the employer of the injured person, it can still be a work related injury and be reportable under RIDDOR.  Fault does not come into RIDDOR.

For me, the reason we try to find out whether there were any deficiencies in the way the work was done is in order to put them right and prevent future injuries.  It's not so that we can avoid counting the injury as if it hadn't happened.

It's obvious why companies would want to get out of recording injuries if they can.  It makes them look better and may help them win contracts.  That doesn't make it right.

Once you have adopted the principle that if we decide we weren't at fault, we don't record it, you then have the temptation and pressure to not look too hard for deficiencies so as to get a favourable result of the investigation.  So then corrective action isn't considered and standards suffer.

I also think it's disrespectful to an employee who has been badly hurt to not acknowledge their injury when reporting injuries. "Why do the figures say there were no injuries last month when I had that nasty accident?"  - "Well, we decided your injury doesn't count."

Guru, I think that you missed one of the points that Kate made.

RIDDOR reportability is nowt to do with potential liability and, in my opinion, the same argument should apply to how many lost time days to count.

So to use your example of a road traffic collision involving two vehicles which for simplicity we could consider HGVs being driven by lorry drivers. 

If on the public highway wouldn't be a RIDDOER due to a limitation of the scope of the regulations but the question is about lost time.

BOTH drivers are "at work" within the meaning of employment legislation and HSWA.

It's a big bump but one driver A walks away almost unscathed and is back at work the following day, whilst the other B is taken to hospital and is off work for 6 months.

It doesn't matter which, or both, or neither, of the drivers might be at "fault". It is an ACCIDENT at work UNLESS driver A deliberatedly rams driver B.

So assuming this is not deliberate, driver A's employer (or themselves) racks up NO days lost due to accident. Whereas driver B's employer (or themselves) rack up lots of days lost.

Further if driver A is driving a car and is drunk when accidentally causing the impact, driver B is still at work when this happens, even if driver A isn't.