After an accident: report, investigate, or both?

First, make it safe

• Give first aid and call 999 if anyone needs emergency help.
• Stop the work and make the area safe if the danger continues.
• Preserve the scene and any evidence where it is safe to do so.
• Record what happened in your accident book.

What must be reported under RIDDOR

• The death of any person as a result of a work-related accident (suicides excepted).
• Specified injuries to workers, such as fractures other than to fingers, thumbs and toes, amputations, serious burns and loss of consciousness caused by a head injury.
• Injuries that keep a worker off their normal duties for more than seven consecutive days, not counting the day of the accident.
• Members of the public or other non-workers taken from the scene to hospital for treatment.
• Certain occupational diseases and dangerous occurrences (specified near misses).

When to report

• Death, or specified injury to a worker

  Deadline

  Without delay; the report must be received within 10 days

• Non-worker taken to hospital, or a dangerous occurrence

  Deadline

  Without delay; the report must be received within 10 days

• Worker off normal duties for more than seven days

  Deadline

  Within 15 days of the accident

• Reportable occupational disease

  Deadline

  As soon as you receive a diagnosis

Note: Report online through HSE. Deaths and specified injuries can also be reported by phone. Injuries that keep someone off normal work for more than three consecutive days must still be recorded, even though they are not reported.

How to investigate well

HSE guidance (HSG245) sets out four steps:

1. 01

   Gather the information

   Photographs, documents, RAMS, training records and conversations with the people involved, as soon as possible.

2. 02

   Analyse it

   Work out the immediate causes, then the underlying and root causes: why the unsafe act or condition made sense at the time.

3. 03

   Identify the controls

   Decide which risk controls failed or were missing, and what would prevent a repeat.

4. 04

   Plan and act

   Give every action an owner and a date, then check it has actually changed things on site.

Common mistakes

• Stopping at "human error" instead of asking why it happened.
• Waiting too long: evidence disappears and memories change.
• Treating the RIDDOR report as the investigation.
• Writing actions nobody owns or follows up.