From September 2011 the RIDDOR notification system used by employers changed, with reporting now being predominantly online, using newly designed forms and online guidance. Employers provide information about the incident using simplified drop-down lists; therefore less detailed information is available compared to the previous reporting arrangements. However, whilst the reporting mechanism changed on the above date, RIDDOR itself did not. The more recent change in RIDDOR in April 2012, from over-3-day to over-7-day reporting, will not affect the published statistics until autumn 2013.
Analysis of data from the new system to date suggests that, whilst the overall numbers are consistent with the previous system, in practice some of the coding and definitions may not be. This problem is frequently observed when administrative systems are changed, and is not unique to RIDDOR.
To enable RIDDOR data to be published for 2011/12, a new dataset has been created for the full-year using data from both old and new systems. This has enabled us to publish top-level RIDDOR figures for the 2011/12 year by:
In recent years more detailed data analysis has been publicly available, through the popular interactive facility called Hands-On.
RIDDOR data for 2011/12 will not be provided through this tool, as some of the detailed data is not available, or sufficiently consistent with that for previous years. RIDDOR data for earlier years, 2001/02 to 2010/11, will still be accessible, as will 2011/12 injury and other data from the Labour Force Survey (LFS).
To ensure data from the new and old reporting systems are comparable, for statistical purposes, HSE statisticians have made the following adjustments to data from the new system. It should be noted that the underlying 'raw' data, as required under RIDDOR and provided by the notifier, remains unchanged.
The new reporting system requires notifiers to select from a drop-down list of industry classifications, and aligns to the UK-wide system of SIC ('Standard Industrial Classification 2007'). The information provided by notifiers allows classification at a '4-digit' SIC level. Together with estimates of employment by SIC, this allows injury rates to be calculated, thereby identifying higher and lower risk industries.
Records have been reviewed and re-coded, where the levels of reports for a given industry were significantly higher or lower than those from the previous system. Some other blocks of industry coding were also obviously mistaken. These have been corrected in blocks, where it was practical to do so, but it was not feasible to review reports individually.
This re-coding has been achieved by using additional information from the reports, to decide whether a more relevant industry code is available. For example, there has been an increase in the proportion of 'other industry' selected, and where possible these have been re-coded to a more specific one.
This re-coding has only been carried out at 2-digit SIC level and not 4-digit, as increasing the detail generally increases the risk of error. The 2-digit level has allowed us to publish industry data by main industries like: construction; broad manufacturing types; agriculture; and top-level service-based industries such as retail and types of public administration.
The new reporting system requires notifiers to enter the job title of the injured person, in a 'free-text' format. To enable analysis, this information requires classification according to the UK-wide 'SOC 2010' ('Standard Occupational Classification 2010'). Where possible, the free-text data provided has been automatically coded. However, many of the job titles provided are too vague to code directly, eg production/process/factory worker. Others used job titles that are unknown outside their industry or company. As with the industry, occupations can sometimes by identified using other information provided, but a small proportion remain un-coded due to insufficient information.
In some cases, the information provided by the notifier is inconsistent with the definitions set out within RIDDOR. Under RIDDOR only certain types of incident are reportable. This includes:
Additionally major injuries are clearly defined in RIDDOR, so, for example a fractured arm can only be major and not an over-3-day injury.
Where invalid values and/or combinations of data exist, these records are automatically re-coded to the appropriate values.
That is, the material or substance involved in the accident. This is no longer collected in the new system, hence only available up to 2010/11.
This data is still collected through a drop-down list, although not at the same level of detail as under the previous system.
Each year a small percentage of incidents appear to be reported 'very late'. For example the date of the report might be 6 months or more after the date given for the incident. In practice it is difficult to determine if the report has been made 'late', or an error was made when the incident date was typed. As the majority of 'very late' reports are almost exactly one or two full years 'old' (around 365 or 730 days time lag), it is assumed an error was made regarding the date of incident, and any record more than six months 'old' defaults to the date reported.
For a variety of reasons, the same incident is sometimes reported more than once. Where possible such records are excluded from statistical analyses. We use an automated computer algorithm to identify possible duplicate records. Each 'possible' duplicate record is then viewed manually, to avoid records being removed due to 'false matching'.
The new RIDDOR reporting system enables simple and efficient notifications to be made by employers. However, sometimes incidents which are not legally reportable are entered on the system. This was also the case with the previous reporting system.
HSE statisticians have identified records which are 'not reportable', and have excluded these from analyses. Typically these include road traffic injuries; workplace complaints; natural causes. (Further information about what should be reported is available on the RIDDOR website.
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