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Insight · Health and safety

RIDDOR, what has to be
reported and by when.

Three different clocks run on three different categories, and the one firms miss is the fifteen days, which counts from the accident rather than from the day you realised.

Published ·5 min read·Written by Unibuild

Deaths, specified injuries and dangerous occurrences are notified without delay by the quickest practicable means, with the report submitted within ten days. An over-seven-day injury is reported within fifteen days of the accident. An over-three-day injury is not reported at all, but it must be recorded.

The deadline everybody misses

Start here, because it is the one that catches out firms who are otherwise doing this properly.

An over-seven-day injury becomes reportable when somebody is incapacitated for more than seven consecutive days, not counting the day of the accident. The reporting deadline is fifteen days. But those fifteen days run from the date of the accident, not from the day the seven days elapse.

So the sequence is this. The accident happens. Seven days pass while you do not yet know whether it is reportable. On about day eight you learn the person is still off, which is the moment the duty crystallises. You now have roughly a week of the fifteen days left, not fifteen.

By the time you know it is reportable, more than half the window has gone. That is why this one is missed, and it is missed by careful people.

The practical answer is to treat any injury causing time off as a diary entry on day one, with a check on day eight. That is the whole discipline.

What is reportable

Seven categories, and the useful distinctions are between them rather than inside them.

  • Deaths. Work-related fatalities, including to non-workers.
  • Specified injuries to workers. A defined list including fractures other than to fingers, thumbs and toes, amputations, loss of sight, crush injuries to the head or torso, serious burns, scalpings, loss of consciousness from head injury or asphyxia, and injuries from working in enclosed spaces. The list is definitive on the HSE site and worth reading rather than remembering.
  • Over-seven-day injuries. Where a worker is incapacitated for more than seven consecutive days, excluding the day of the accident. Incapacitated means unable to do their normal work, not necessarily absent.
  • Injuries to non-workers where the person is taken directly from the scene to hospital for treatment. Relevant on any site with public interface.
  • Occupational diseases, where a written diagnosis is received and the work involves a specified activity. Carpal tunnel, hand-arm vibration syndrome, occupational dermatitis, occupational asthma and tendonitis are the ones construction meets.
  • Dangerous occurrences. Near misses of a specified kind, reportable whether or not anybody was hurt. Structural collapse, scaffold collapse, plant overturning, accidental release of a biological agent, and contact with overhead power lines are the construction ones.
  • Gas incidents, which carry their own reporting arrangements.

Three days and seven days are different things

Worth stating on its own because the two thresholds are constantly conflated.

An injury causing more than three consecutive days of incapacity must be recorded. It is not reported to the HSE. An injury causing more than seven consecutive days must be reported.

So a five-day injury generates a record and no report. An eight-day injury generates both. Firms that treat three days as the reporting trigger over-report, which is harmless but wasteful. Firms that never record the three-day cases have a gap in their records that becomes visible at exactly the wrong moment, because the accident book is one of the first things asked for after a serious incident.

Whose duty it is

The responsible person, which for an employee's injury is the employer. That has a consequence on a construction site that is worth being explicit about.

If a subcontractor's operative is injured on your site, the duty to report normally sits with their employer, not with you. That does not mean it is not your problem. You will want to know it happened, you may have duties as principal contractor around the circumstances, and you certainly want it in your own records. Assuming somebody else reported it, and finding out months later that nobody did, is a bad position to be in.

For a self-employed person injured on premises under somebody else's control, the duty falls to the person in control of those premises, which on most sites is the principal contractor.

How it is done

Reports are made online through the HSE's reporting service, except fatal and specified injuries, which can also be notified by telephone and generally should be for speed. Keep the copy of the submitted report: it is a record you will want later, and it is not always easy to retrieve afterwards.

Two things that are not reporting but sit next to it. Reporting is not an admission of liability, and a firm that delays reporting because it is worried about liability has turned one problem into two. And reporting does not discharge your own investigation: the report tells the regulator, the investigation tells you why it happened.

Where this touches the platform

Unibuild does not submit RIDDOR reports and does not decide reportability, which is a judgment about the injury and the circumstances. What it holds is the material the decision and any later investigation rest on: incidents recorded against the job with their dates, site diaries with the trades on site and the weather captured daily, RAMS and permits with their versions and briefing records, and photographs attached where they were taken. That matters twice, once for producing the report inside the deadline with the right facts, and again months later when somebody asks what the conditions were on the day. The gap it does not close is the fifteen day clock: knowing an injury has passed seven days needs somebody watching an absence, and that is a person's job.

Health and safety Comms and reporting Project and site Documents and certificates

Where to start, on Monday

Two questions. Does your accident book capture the date of the accident and the date the person returned to normal work, because without both you cannot tell whether the seven days were passed. And does anybody check, on about day eight, whether a reported absence has crossed the threshold.

Most firms have the first and not the second, which is precisely why the fifteen days is the deadline that gets missed. Adding the day-eight check costs nothing.

The definitive lists of specified injuries and dangerous occurrences are on the HSE site and should be read there rather than from any summary, including this one.

Asked most often

The follow-up questions.

What an inspector does with all of this is in when an HSE inspector turns up on site.

What are the RIDDOR reporting deadlines?+
Deaths, specified injuries and dangerous occurrences must be notified without delay by the quickest practicable means, with the report submitted within ten days. Over-seven-day injuries must be reported within fifteen days of the accident. Occupational diseases are reported once a written diagnosis is received.
Does the 15 days run from the accident or from day eight?+
From the date of the accident. This is the deadline most often missed, because the duty only crystallises on about day eight when you learn the person is still incapacitated, by which time more than half the fifteen day window has already gone. Treating any injury causing time off as a diary entry with a check on day eight is the practical answer.
What is the difference between a three-day and a seven-day injury?+
More than three consecutive days of incapacity must be recorded but is not reported to the HSE. More than seven consecutive days must be reported. So a five-day injury produces a record only, and an eight-day injury produces both. Neither count includes the day of the accident, and incapacitated means unable to do normal work rather than necessarily absent.
Who reports if a subcontractor's operative is injured on my site?+
Normally their employer, as the responsible person for their own employee. That does not make it irrelevant to you: you will want it in your own records, and you may have duties as principal contractor around the circumstances. For a self-employed person injured on premises under someone else's control, the duty falls to whoever controls those premises, which on most sites is the principal contractor.
What counts as a dangerous occurrence in construction?+
Specified near misses reportable whether or not anybody was hurt. The ones construction meets most are structural or scaffold collapse, plant overturning, and contact with overhead power lines. The list is defined and definitive on the HSE site, so it is worth reading there rather than relying on a summary.
Is making a RIDDOR report an admission of liability?+
No. Reporting is a statutory duty and not an admission, and delaying a report out of concern about liability converts one problem into two. Reporting also does not discharge your own investigation: the report tells the regulator that something happened, while the investigation tells you why, which is the part that stops it happening again.
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