Good afternoon, 

I am doing an inspection of a shared workspace- it is an office which has been set up for business professionals where they can pay to use a desk/office which is run by an organisation who have control for the premises. 

One stumbling block, which I am sure is actually pretty straight forward, is I need to discuss their accident procedures with them. Obviously a lot of the office users will be individuals or a small team who pay to use a section of the office, where the furniture and facilities are provided for them by the organisation. 

Does the organisation who control the premises need to be responsible for the accident book and reporting procedures? I feel like I should treat as you would a construction site where you have various contractors working on the site and if an incident happens on their premises, it is up to the site management to record the accident. 

Would you agree? 

Thanks :) 

Sorry to disagree accident recording / investigation is primarily up to the employer. It is even likely that in the contractual small print the provider makes the renter responsible for RIDDOR reports (I would in this scenario)

By explanation most of our business premises are rented (OK we normally take the whole building) but there is no landlord involvement with day to day accidents - they become involved in the event of major incidents fire, flood

I would tend to take the view that this is a bit like renting out hotel rooms - you don't expect the guest to be responsible for everything including accident reporting.

So the way I would set it up is that the rental agreement includes that the venue is responsible for accident treatments and reporting and I would treat the hirers as though they are members of the public.  I think this fits with RIDDOR because the premises owner remains the operator of the premises in your scenario. 

I think Roundtuit would be right if you were renting a big chunk of the premises for a prolonged period of time but for short rentals such as you are talking about I think it will be the premises operator who bears the contractural burden, however, you should probably also point out to the individual companies that if someone has accident on your site and then has time off work as a result that they are responsible for RIDDOR. 

This works the same as it would for someone renting a hotel room - real life example - many years ago I had a fall in a bath in a hotel where my company was having a conference, I had to go to hospital because I had a cracked rib, the hotel were responsible for the immediate reporting (it was before the change in the law).  By analogy if I walked into your rented office space, tripped over the carpet and broke my arm and was taken to hospital for treatment I would expect the venue to do the reporting.  However, say I had a fall, sprained my wrist didn't go to hospital and then had a week off work to recover.   My employer would be responsible for RIDDOR reporting because it happened in the course of my normal working duties, the venue treats me as a member of the public and has no reporting requirement because I didn't go to hospital directly from the premises and didn't get treatment. 

Does that help - I think that's a sensible approach but others may think I'm wrong but it feels right to me!!