So we had an employee who decided to arrange the stock in their van outside of their contracted hours, whilst carrying out said task, an item from a shelf fell (employee feels he must have not put it in the shelf correctly), to break the fall of this item, the employee moved his leg forward and it fell square on his kneecap. Long story short the employee is out of work for two weeks. 

I would really appreciate your support on the following questions:

a) Is this work related, since the employee decided to complete this task outside of work hours?

b) Would this be RIDDOR reportable?

c) Personally I feel the business is not liable as the employee breached their section 7 responsibilities by performing an Act that put them in danger when it wasn't neccessary, I say this knowing (and always trying) to ensure we don't just blame employees for accidents and try to find the root cause. In this scenario there was no need to carry out this task outside of work hours, there was ample time during work hours.  

d) What Action can I take to prevent this happening? My initial thoughts are to remind everyone of their section 7 responsibilities and to ensure they RA every task and ensure they are carried out during the hours of work

I agree with A Kurdziel.

It is a work realated activity, he was moving box for work purposes.

I admit to being slightly concerned that you seem to be focusing so strongly on avoiding blame. Maybe it is just the way it comes across when written down. Whilst reminding employees on section 7, you may want to re-visit section 2(2b). You need to ensure (SFARP) safety and absence of risks to health in connection with the use, handling, storage and transport of articles and substances. Also 2(2c) you need to ensure sufficient supervision (SFARP), which if he was working out of hours never happened.

I would also look to review the manual handling training, the storage of the articles and any manual handling risk assessment and lone working, if that is what happened here. Remember if you are looking for a "root cause" for this accident, it is almost always a management failing.

I assume you mean "liable" to prosecution, for which I would suggest probably not. Liablility to a civil claim is never as black and white. You do owe them a duty of care, and they were injured. It really depends on whether you could have done something reasonable that would have avoided the accident, such as supervising better, better training, better storage etc.

hardworkingdude

As to RIDDOR, nothing to add to what AK has already written.

As to liability, possibly it was just an accident with nobody to "blame" - but you couldn't decide that without an investigation.

Suggest you investigate mostly as if the incident happened in normal working hours, as when the incident occurred is quite probably a red herring.

The first question would be why your employee would need to be rearranging stock in the van. Not knowing what the stock is there could be countless reasons for that.

Then, amongst other considerations, is the item that fell of a type likely to be unstable, is the storage suitable for it, is it easy to reach so as to place the item so that it is unlikely to move, are there reasons why it is readily foreseeable that someone would misplace the item etc etc.

Might be that it all comes down to how something ELSE is stored in the van that then has a domino effect in how everything else is put in.

Originally Posted by: hardworkingdude

In this scenario there was no need to carry out this task outside of work hours, there was ample time during work hours.

Exactly what would be different during working hours that would have prevented the incident?

It would still be a single employee in the back of a van.

You are only going to prevent this incident by either making the task one for several people OR changing the layout of the van - will your management support either move?

RIDDOR reportable.