The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has opened a 12-week consultation on proposals to simplify and clarify how businesses comply with the requirements under the Reporting of Injuries, Disease and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 1995 (as amended) (RIDDOR ’95).
The review follows recommendations made in Professor Löfstedt’s independent review of health and safety legislation last year, which the government accepted and is committed to implementing by October 2013.
Chief amongst those recommendations were that RIDDOR and its associated guidance be amended to provide clarity for businesses on how to comply, by reducing ambiguity over reporting requirements for businesses, particularly in relation to incidents involving members of the public.
The HSE has since been asked for a fuller review of the regulations by groups that include the CBI, trade unions, the Federation of Small Businesses and the Chartered Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH).
In its consultation, HSE is proposing that the new reporting requirements:
- focus on operational needs (that is, ensure that enforcing authorities are notified of individual incidents which are serious enough as to require regulatory attention);
- ensure there is sufficient data for HSE and others to act in a riskbased manner, and for statistical and intelligence purposes to meet European and other international obligations;
- simplify certain reporting requirements;
- provide clear guidance, giving examples of what must be reported and what does not have to be reported and by what deadline.
The consultation period ends on 28 October.
The proposals also seek to implement the changes recommended in the 2010 government report, Common Sense, Common Safety, by re-examining whether RIDDOR is the best approach to providing an accurate national picture of workplace accidents.
