GUIDANCE TO HELP EMPLOYERS INVESTIGATE ACCIDENTS AT WORK

HSC press release: C002:03 - 31 January 2003

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) will issue new guidance later this year to help employers investigate incidents that cause injuries and ill health in the work place.

The decision to issue the guidance, rather than to recommend legislation to require employers to investigate incidents, was taken by the Health and Safety Commission (HSC) at its meeting last month after taking views in response to a wide-ranging consultation exercise.

HSE received 684 responses to the 1998 discussion document A new duty to investigate accidents, and 460 to the 2001 consultative document, Proposals for a new duty to investigate accidents dangerous occurrences and diseases. This set out proposals to introduce specific legal requirements on employers and others to investigate incidents reportable under the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 1995 (RIDDOR).

There was overwhelming support for the principle of using incident investigations to learn lessons and prevent workplace injury and ill health, and a range of views over how that could best be achieved. Research commissioned by HSE into current practice, published in Accident investigation - The drivers, methods and outcomes revealed widespread lack of confidence in carrying out such investigations, and many felt that guidance to address this knowledge gap would be more helpful than a legal duty.

HSC Chair Bill Callaghan said: "We want people to learn the lessons from work-related incidents with the potential to cause injury and ill health so that they can prevent similar occurrences in the future. We recognise that some employers need help to tackle this issue, so we are preparing a range of guidance material. We will monitor the effectiveness of this guidance closely - and if there is no improvement in incident investigation then we may consider the possibility of recommending new legislation."

In 2001/2 249 people died and 27,477 more suffered major injury through work activity, while 40.2 million days off work were caused by work-related injury and illness. Lessons can be learned by investigating these incidents, and also 'near misses' - serious health and safety failures where no one is injured.
The guidance will come in a range of formats and the first of these will be published later this year. They will include paper and software investigation tools, and basic and more detailed information leaflets.

Notes to editors

1. HSC consulted on the discussion document: 'A new duty to investigate accidents' (DDE9) in 1998-9 and a consultative document ' Proposals for a new duty to investigate accidents, dangerous occurrences and diseases (CD169)' setting out draft legal requirements in 2001.

2. The proposals were to introduce specific legal requirements on employers and others to investigate incidents reportable under the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 1995 (RIDDOR).

3. The accident statistics quoted in this press release are HSE figures for the year 2001/2002. (Details available from: http://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/overall/hssh0102.pdf.) On 7 June 2000, Bill Callaghan and Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott launched the Revitalising Health and Safety initiative. This aims to achieve, by the year 2010, the following national improvement targets: to reduce the incidence of working days lost from ill-health by 30 per cent; reduce the incidence of people suffering from work-related ill-health by 20 per cent; and reduce the rate of fatal and major injury accidents by 10 per cent. There is an additional target to achieve half of each improvement by the year 2004.

Accident investigation - The drivers, methods and outcomes, CRR 344/2001, can be found at http://www.hse.gov.uk/research/crr_pdf/2001/crr01344.pdf

Press enquiries

All enquiries from journalists should be directed to the HSE Press Office