Posted By Ian Waldram My understanding is that your original view is correct. IOSH is hoping to publish advice covering this and other aspects of doing an internal inquiry & report in parallel with an external investigation. However this won't happen for some months at the earliest. The following are my personal thoughts, not IOSH. From a practitioners viewpoint, the main purpose of an internal investigation is to identify root causes and implement suitably improved controls so as to prevent a recurrence. This will often include publicity to all those involved in similar situations, so that lessons are learned. A secondary purpose may be to accurately record evidence, to be used in a possible future legal case, either civil or common law. However if publicity is required so as to achieve the main purpose, legal privilege is lost. As a generality, for a civil law case, genuine attempts to understand the causes and help others to learn from the accident are likely to result in a reduced penalty if the case eventually comes to court and charges are proven. However, thorough investigations can also present evidence on a plate to a potential prosecutor, if a copy of the internal investigation is given to or obtained by them. This is a delicate area, where is is important not to give the impression of withholding significant evidence, whilst at the same time expecting enforcement agencies to collect their own evidence in preference to merely reading and copying yours. In my experience, open discussion about the difficulties in this area with HSE Inspectors has never got me into trouble, though I know of others who think differently (I have no experience with LA's or police investigations). Similarly, honest discussions with company lawyers have sometimes resulted in minor changes to the wording of a 'final draft' internal investigation report, but never to the point where I judged my professional integrity was compromised.

Posted By Peter Roddis Ian/Simon Thanks for your responses. This seems to be an interesting area and one I am currently debating extensively as I am preparing a protocol for dealing with enforcement interventions. It would be good to extend this discussion if possible to how we investigate incidents and then respond to requests for copies of reports by the HSE etc. My approach in the past has always been that we have provided whatever the HSE request in order to cooperate. There is little point in hiding things as they will find out anyway and its better to be honest about what was wrong and how you have responded. This has almost always worked well in terms of the outcome. Howver, LPP is a difficult issue and I would be interested in any other views out there. Are there any members with legal training who could help?

Posted By Peter Roddis John Thanks for your response. How would that apply then to the following: 1. An accident occurs and the safety adviser feels it will result in enforcement and so contacts his solicitor before completing a report. 2. The HSE visit and suggest that action may be taken but have not yet made a decision. The SA contacts his solicitor and they agree a report will be prepared to identify causes and avoid recurrence. 3. Same as 2 but the report is to advise his solicitor re liability. It would be really useful if you or anyone could answer these questions for me. I have views on them but would appreciate an independant perspective.