I attended a branch meeting today 10/01/13 in Bristol and was told of some possible forthcoming changes to RIDDOR (Reporting Injuries Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations).

Last year the UK Government changed the reporting period of incidents to 7 days (it was previously 3 days). It now appears that a further 3 changes may be made:

(1) Removing the reporting of Occupational Diseases.

(2) Removing the reporting of Injuries to the public.

(3) Removing the reporting of dangerous occurrences outside high risk sectors.

So my observation are, (1) the HSE (Health and Safety Executive) looses both statistical information and public health awareness of trends and outbreaks of such diseases like Mesothelioma (asbestos cancer),
(currently there are 13000 registrations yearly), Legionella, Hepatitis.
How will government agencies react quickly enough without this information?

Injuries to the public (2) are rare and when they do occur the Police tend to get involved fairly quickly, so I can just about understand HSE not needing this report from the parties involved - so will the Police inform the HSE and CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) for a prosecution?

Reporting dangerous occurrences outside high risk sectors (3), so the HSE doesn't get involved and the parties involved get away without an investigation to stop it from happening again?

Initially it sounds short sighted to me, what do you think?

I work in an industry that's regarded as low risk (I guess); Healthcare. Collapse or failure of the lifting parts of any hoist or lift is a specified dangerous occurrence. Hoist mishaps kill and seriously injure people in the Health & Social care sector with lamentable frequency, OK, it's often user error (due to lack of training and supervision etc etc) rather than mechanical failure, but still, I don't like the idea that we won't have to report this to HSE. Sure, we report to MHRA, but there's no penalty if we don't, and I would imagine many independent small social care providers wouldn't know who MHRA were if they turned up and started partying in their garden,

John

The Education sector is another that has a high proportion of RIDDORs to members of the public, since pupils/students are not employees.

I think it a fair bet that every proposal in that CD redken references will come into effect - perhaps as early as this April.

REDKEN - thanks for the link, I just read it again and noticed this:

This consultation began on 2 August 2012 and ended on 28 October 2012

Yesterdays branch meeting was the first I'd heard of it, despite lurking on the forums everyday.

RIDDOR along with much other legislation, it takes so long for people to become familiar with rules that by the time they are clear they are changed. The regulations are an important tool to encourage consistency in reporting, especially for less scrupulous managers. As for disregarding Occ. Health issues, this decreases the already low priority on the 'health' element of health and safety.