HSE Board Recommends Changes Following RIDDOR Consultation Exercise

Outcome of the consultation on the Common Sense, Common Safety Proposal to amend the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 1995 (RIDDOR).

As previously reported by Unionsafety in February, the government has made several proposals for change to be made to RIDDOR in order to make it less cumbersome for businesses, following lobbying from the CBI and the FSB business groups. the original consultation document was made available on this website in the E-Library Database.

The paper in response to the consultation process was presented to the HSE Board recently in London, with NW BTU H&S Co-ord members Derek Maylor and John Southwell attending as observers. Below is their report from the HSE board's decisions regarding the future for RIDDOR:

The major issue was the proposed change to increase the period for reporting injuries that lead to a worker being incapacitated from over three days to over seven days.

Looking at the presentation to the Board, there was a 2:1 majority in favour of the proposed change. Only 28 responses [4%] were from trade unions and the exact split of the responses was 66.49% in support of the change with 31.19% being against it. Although the figures are clear the Board do not merely use the populist vote every time otherwise we would have Directors Duties already. Disappointingly one of the main returns was that “administrative burdens would be reduced” as well as it having “a positive impact on the claims culture”.

Although it was not unanimous, the Board agreed to recommend to the Secretary of State that the move to 7 days noting that there needs to be further protection to ensure certain rights of [union] safety representatives, better guidance is required to reinforce that the injured person does not need to be absent from work to trigger RIDDOR and, that the deadline by which the responsible person must complete a RIDDOR report also be extended. The will be a need for clear clarification to be issued particularly to SME’s  as the requirement for the employer to record over three day injuries will remain, they will just not be required to report them to the HSE until they meet the new threshold. We question how is that supposed to reduce the alleged “administrative burden” to employers?

So there is a missed opportunity to extend RIDDOR, for example, to include road traffic accidents where one of the parties was injured on their way to/from work. Also we feel that many learning opportunities to investigate “smaller” incidents will be missed thus resulting in more serious incidents occurring as well as new and emerging hazards not being spotted. So there will be losses along the way for such a little prize. The Board closed this part of the meeting with a guarantee to review the whole concept of RIDDOR in two to three years.    

Timescales:

Submission to Ministers - week commencing 5 September 2011
Submit regulations to Ministers for signing - week commencing 26 December 2011
Regulations laid before Parliament - week commencing 13 February 2012
Common Commencement Date - Regulation in force – 6 April 2012

See also: Consultation Opens On RIDDOR Changes and RIDDORChangesConsultationDocumentNowAvailable as background to the consultation and the reasons for it.

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