The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has launched a twelve week consultation on proposals to simplify and clarify the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations (RIDDOR).
RIDDOR places duties on employers, the self-employed and people in control of work premises to report serious accidents in the workplace, occupational diseases and specific dangerous occurrences. Reporting assists regulatory bodies in establishing when further investigation is required. It also provides regulators with statistics which assist in identifying trends and subsequently providing the most appropriate forms of guidance on prevention.
HSE consultation manager David Charnock has provided that "we are proposing to simplify the requirements by removing the duty to report in those areas where the information can be better obtained from other sources or where the data isn't particularly useful to the regulators." Proposals include the removal of the duty on the self-employed to report injuries and illnesses to themselves. Proposals are also made to remove the requirement for employers to report dangerous occurrences outside of high-risk sectors and the removal of the requirement to report most occupational diseases. The need to report all fatal injuries as a result of a work activity remains, as does the duty to report major injuries to workers.
These proposals follow from the Common Sense, Common Safety Government report published in October 2010 which recommended a re-examination of RIDDOR to determine whether it was the best approach for obtaining accurate information on a national basis. The proposals also flow from Professor Löfstedt's recommendation that ambiguity over reporting requirements should be removed.
To view the consultation document in full, and for information on how to respond, click here. Consultation closes on 28 October 2012.
This article was written for Law-Now, CMS Cameron McKenna's free online information service. To register for Law-Now, please go to www.law-now.com/law-now/mondaq
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The original publication date for this article was 13/08/2012.
