RIDDOR: what must be reported, and by when

The Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 2013 are short, but the deadlines are strict and the categories are often misread. Here is the practical version.

What is reportable

• Deaths and specified injuries to workers: fractures other than fingers, thumbs and toes; amputations; sight loss; crush injuries to the head or torso; serious burns; scalping; loss of consciousness from head injury or asphyxia; and injuries from working in an enclosed space.
• Over-seven-day incapacitation: a worker is off, or unable to do their normal duties, for more than seven consecutive days, not counting the day of the accident.
• Non-fatal accidents to non-workers where the person is taken directly from the scene to hospital for treatment.
• Occupational diseases including carpal tunnel syndrome, occupational dermatitis, hand-arm vibration syndrome, occupational asthma and tendonitis where the work involves the relevant activity.
• Dangerous occurrences from the Schedule 2 list: collapse or failure of lifting equipment, plant coming into contact with overhead lines, explosion or fire causing a stoppage over 24 hours, and others.

The two clocks

Deaths, specified injuries, dangerous occurrences and diseases must be reported without delay, and the online form completed within ten days of the incident. Over-seven-day injuries have a longer window: fifteen days from the day of the accident.

The trap with over-seven-day injuries is that the clock runs from the accident, not from the day you realise the absence has passed seven days. If someone is hurt on the first of the month and still off on the ninth, the report is due by the sixteenth, and you have already used more than half the window before you knew a report was needed.

Over-three-day injuries

These are no longer reportable, but they must be recorded. An accident book entry is the minimum. In practice, a recorded incident with the absence tracked against it is what turns an over-three-day record into an over-seven-day report at the right moment.

What good looks like

1. Every incident is recorded the day it happens, with the injured person and the nature of injury.
2. Absence is tracked against the incident, so the seventh day is a date the system knows.
3. Reportability is assessed on the record, not in a phone call.
4. The report deadline is a statutory calendar item, ranked above everything internal.

Safegen assesses reportability in the incident wizard and puts the RIDDOR deadline in the compliance calendar as a statutory item. The reporting itself is still made on the HSE portal; we get you there with the right facts and time in hand.