Hi all Looking for some clarification as the guidance is unclear. Construction site operative has tweaked his back during manual handling on a building site and is off work as a result. He has now declared he has a pre-existing back condition (with hindsight he shouldn't have been doing the task!!), however is likely to now be off work in excess of 7 days. Will this be reportable considering he has a pre existing condition that he aggrevated at work? Many thanks! Louise

Howdy I've said it before, I'll say it again. This idea that an injury automatically qualifies for RIDDOR consideration at all is incorrect. The HSE website quite clearly makes the point, in black and white, that 'injuries themselves, eg ‘feeling a sharp twinge’, are not accidents'. http://www.hse.gov.uk/riddor/key-definitions.htm If there is not an accident, then it fails at the first hurdle of reportability under RIDDOR. Was there an actual accident or was this just 'normal' work?

Louise, did your organisation make reasonable enquiries to establish any pre-existing conditions prior to his commencement of work? Or, has he suddenly remembered this 'pre-existing' condition? Simon

What accident? HSE has a definition for accident and I'm not seeing it being met based upon the description given. The pre-existing condition clearly has wider management implications as highlighted.

You raise a very interesting point that I had not considered. I can see how some back injuries could have an accidental cause: e.g. I've had bin men hurt themselves trying to stop a bin from toppling off of a kerb, but as you say just bending down to pick up an item and then having the back pain has no separate, identifiable unintended event that caused the injury. I'm wondering how many RIDDOR reports are not counted in the HSE stats because of this or do they just use the numbers that are submitted? Thank you Xavier, this one goes on my learning point list (it's very long!). Louise, please review my first response in light of Xavier's advice.

Bang on the nail as far as I'm concerned. ;) Correlation does not equal causation in regards to manual handling as it is often the cumulative exposure (or pre-existing issues or a whole host of other bits and pieces) that are ultimately responsible. Accident is defined by the HSE for a reason and there are definitely some grey areas still. I don't consider this to be one of them. The injury is unintended. The task and event were not. Once you divorce the injury from the event, you'll see why there is no accident. Otherwise you run the risk of arguing that every manual handling event is a near-miss.

I see. As you say this was not an accident. Thanks for clarifying.

I agree with Xavier123 it is not automatically reportable, but to be clear the HSE statement “Injuries themselves, eg ‘feeling a sharp twinge’, are not accidents. There must be an identifiable external event that causes the injury, eg a falling object striking someone. Cumulative exposures to hazards, which eventually cause injury (eg repetitive lifting), are not classed as ‘accidents’ under RIDDOR.” I have always taken this to mean that if the person has had a hard day or weeks work and felt a slight twinge then not reportable as it is just from repetitive use. However, if there was a clear specific task that they were doing, ie “breaking their Balls” to lift something or doing it very awkwardly then this is reportable. Ie I would consider this an accident as there was a specific incident. I think some could read the above posts and think that no manual handing injury was reportable, where I personally don’t think this is the case. In fact the HSE report on Manual handing injuries, so must be interested in the ones from specific events. The OP just states it was from manual handling, not if it was a specific task or a cumulative effect. Chris