• Document everything: your initial assessment, absence reason, and the fact that the GP cited stress.

• Ask the colleague (in writing) to provide:

  • Their incident statement (as already requested).

  • Updated GP/medical evidence if they now claim physical injury linked to the event.

Without medical confirmation, you should not submit a RIDDOR report purely “to be on the safe side,” as that could misrepresent the facts. Instead, keep a clear record of why you have not reported at this stage.

 Don're report yet but be ready to if new evidence confirms a work related injury.  Make sure you keep an auditable trail of documentation and decisions log for defendability...I have a spidey sense is tingling, that this may be a claim in the offing

Hi HandSNHS

Whilst realising that making assumptions is always a bit risky, I am going to assume that your profile name is an indicator that your work takes you into the healthcare sector where physical and verbal aggression to staff is a well documented issue.

I think your narrative is one of many where to decide on whether an incident is RIDDOR reportable (or recordable) you should read the detail of the Regulations and not the spin that HSE has put on them in its guidance - which for a long time has appeared to me to be intended to encourage duty holders to NOT report (or record) events that I think meet the criteria for reporting/recording.

Starting with what is clear. One change in RIDDOR over the years has been an amendment to the definition of "accident":

“accident” includes an act of non-consensual physical violence done to a person at work;

So, if a boxer hits another boxer in the ring that counts as a "consensual" act and so even if the subsequent injury meets the other criteria in RIDDOR it is out of scope.

Similarly, if there are two patients in A&E and one thumps the other, then this is very unlikely to be "work-related".

In contrast if one of those patients thumps a member of the hospital staff, then it will fall within scope if other criteria are met.

However, the next problem is that there is no definition of "injury" in RIDDOR.

RIDDOR does set some parameters for what types of "injury" are to be reported but doesn't tell you what counts as an "injury".

HSE is very clear that lost time due to a build up over time of "stress" (or the other words HSE often likes to use instead) are NOT within scope as you have to have an identifiable event.

But, if that identifiable event is being thumped when at work in A&E and the initial incident results in the victim sustaining "stress" of such nature as to make them need time off, then why should this NOT be an "injury"?

In any other aspect of the application of HSWA and its subsidiary legislation (including, of course, RIDDOR) HSE is very keen to make the case that protecting people's "health and safety" includes protecting them from mental harm as well as physicail harm.

In the interpretation of any term in UK legislation the first place to turn is that legislation, so in this case RIDDOR. If not there, then you default to the parent legislation, in this case HSWA, which also avoids direct definition of "injury" but does give us a clue in Section 71(4) where there is instead a definition of "damage":

(4) In this section " damage " includes the death of, or injury to, any person (including any disease and any impairment of a person's physical or mental condition).

OK, this Section of HSWA only deals with civil liability so perhaps does NOT give us an anxwer.

So, next step is the Interpretation Act 1978 and if there isn't a definition there, then the default is the Oxford English Dictionary.

OED is huge and few people have one, but my Concise OED defines "injury" as follows:

1. an instance of being injured. 2. the fact of being injured; harm or damage.

So, next we need to know what the OED says about the word "injured":

1. harmed or wounded. 2. offended; wronged.

If we ignore the second definition of "injured", then it strikes me (pun NOT intended!) that a person suffering acute stress from aggression at their workplace has sustained an "injury" and if the "violence" was "non-consensual" then any incident causing it falls within the scope of RIDDOR assuming that it meets one of the thresholds for reporting/recording.

....and bear in mind that harm does not always present immediately.

So, it wouldn't be the first time that the "injury" cannot be detected until some time after the "accident". 

I think that in your scenario, a claim of subseequent "pain" could be a red herring in terms of deciding whether the preceding incident would fall within the scope of RIDDOR. 

So the question is perhaps more about whether needing time off due to "stress" was due to that single incident or perhaps the culmination of various factors, but do you really want the task of convincing people that this incident was NOT the trigger?

Said it many times from the days when I worked for HSE.

Nobody can be prosecuted for reporting things that are proved not to be in scope of incident reporting legislation.

In contrast, the duty holder (and perhaps others) CAN be prosecuted for NOT complying with such legislation if any event can be shown to be within scope.

One of the fundamental principles of UK health and safety legislation is to avoid risk when practical. Why take the risk of NOT reporting something that MIGHT be reportable?!?! What is the reward for taking that risk?

Edited by user 17 September 2025 14:28:24(UTC)  | Reason: Typo