Back in June an agency worker cut his leg while working for us. The first aider treated him and took him to the local minor injuries hospital where it was glued and dressed. The shift supervisor made an entry in the accident book, carried out a basic investigation (IP hadn't followed his training properly) and that was that.

We didn't see the IP gain which is not particularly unusual, our agency requirements fluctuate daily, and the people the agency sends in change all the time as well (although they all get an induction).

Then yesterday I get a claim letter from the IP's solicitors in which they are claiming for loss of earnings as the IP was unable to work for several weeks following the accident.

The agency did not tell us the IP was not fit to work, so we didn't do a RIDDOR report and neither did they as the IP did not tell them he was unable to work due to the accident, just that he was unavailable. To be fair the IP is from Eastern Europe so does not necessarily know what he should do.

However I questioned the agency as to what their procedure was for informing me that a person was unable to work due to an accident at work so I could report it, and they said they couldn't tell me as disclosing this was against the data protection act.

So is this true? If it is, how am I supposed to comply with RIDDOR if I am not allowed to be told that the accident is a RIDDOR?

Any thoughts gratefully received.

But at the time of said accident, the IP was under the employment of Borisgiles company, therefore is he not the employer?

I agree with Liz and in fact have successfully rejected a claim in the past on the exact same grounds.

If you look at table 1 in the guidance it is clear that when a person is an employee all reportable incidents are reportable by the employer. This is for two reasons 1) as in this case the person in control of the premises may not know over 3 days have been lost and 2) to prevent duplicate reporting.

Boris,

In my case, I simply wrote back to the solicitors stating that the IP had never been an employee of my company. That was the last I heard of it.

Slightly digressing, it is better to have explicit terms & conditions of contract with agency so that duties/responsibilities of both the agency and you as the client organisation are documented etc, especially when it comes to specific aspects of health & safety, such as reporting of accidents, PPE, training, making contact for emergencies etc.

Whilst the agency can use DPA for not providing personal details of the employee ( I still wonder why--as someone would have to make contact with next of kin in case of seriuos injury/emergencies etc!), I cannot fathom any reason why it cannot provide the "procedure" it uses.

They just use DPA as a knee jerk excuse like others use elf n safety.

We do have T's & C's with the agency which cover training, PPE etc, but not reporting. This will be rectified straight away! I agree - I don't think there is a procedure at the agency at the moment. Changing the agency is not an option currently (political reasons - owner is a friend of our owner)

I can understand DPA reasons for not disclosing loss of earnings, but not for letting me have his training record etc.

I have spoken to our insurers and passed the claim on to them with a note explaining our lack of information and the agency contact information.

Still not sure about doing a RIDDOR report now. I know nothing about the IP except his name, I know nothing about the injury except he hurt his leg, and I don't really know what happened. I currently have no means of obtaining this information. I don't really want to send in an F2508 with lots of question marks on it...