Following the publication of Lord Young’s report on reducing the health and safety burden on businesses, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has proposed changes to the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences 1995 (As Amended) (RIDDOR).
From 6th April 2012 the current requirement to report “over three day injuries” will change. From this date the trigger point will increase to over seven days. Employers will only have to report injuries to an employee incapacitated for more than seven consecutive days. The report must now be made within 15 days (the previous requirement was for the report to be submitted within 10 days).
Although the impact of these changes is small, there are likely to be repercussions on health and safety management within most organisations.
The expected effects can be classified as follows;
- Health and Safety Policy: All employers meeting the requirements of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 will have existing policies and procedures for accident reporting and monitoring. Each of these policies and procedures will have to be reviewed and updated to account for the changes to accident reporting requirements. For many businesses the number of and prevention of accidents will form part of their OHS objectives and these should be reviewed taking into considerati0on the change in RIDDOR requirements.
- Health and Safety Planning and Implementation Systems: Risk assessment processes and the arrangements in place for recording and reporting accidents will have to be adjusted in order to reflect the changing demands of the revised RIDDOR policy.
- OHS Monitoring and Reporting: Many businesses already record and monitor accident frequencies and severities and provide this data to stakeholders and other interested parties. The increase from three to seven days makes it likely that the number of incidents recorded will fall, therefore monitoring and reporting processes along with the subsequent interpretation of these results will need to be changed.
In addition to the above changes to policy and procedure demanded by the requirement change, businesses also need to consider how reports and statistics related to accidents in the workplace and their organisational impact are collected and collated through their supply chain management and selection processes. Many procurement processes require suppliers to provide accident data (especially RIDDOR related data) which again will be affected by the changes.
The April amendments to the RIDDOR requirements mark the second recent change to incident reporting arrangements. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) also implemented a new reporting system last September, when it introduced a suite of online forms designed to make t he reporting of all non-fatal and non-major incidents and accidents digital. Only fatal and major incidents are now to be reported via telephone to the HSE.
As part of the September changes, the telephone support system manned by HSE staff to provide basic information was also brought to an end, increasing the usefulness of a health and safety management consultancy and the importance of formal health and safety training and reporting systems for staff members.