A proposed change under RIDDOR 1995 to report incidents that lead to a worker being incapacitated for more than seven days rather than three days, as is currently the case, has been described as a potential retrograde move for health and safety.

Steffan Groch, head of regulatory at DWF, addressed delegates at the SHP Legal Arena today on the topic of RIDDOR, a week after the HSE’s consultation on the proposal closed.

A recommendation first made by Lord Young last year in his report Common sense, common safety, Steffan explained that the Conservative peer had identified a less-than desirable level of compliance with RIDDOR, and that a change in the requirement to report over-three-day (O3D)  injuries to over-seven-day (O7D) injuries might increase the level of compliance by being less burdensome on employers.

Steffan said the jury is still very much out on whether such a change would increase compliance, warning, as well, that the message the impact of the change could send to directors is potentially harmful.

“The message that this gives to boardrooms is that if an incident results in less than seven days off work, then it is not sufficiently serious to tell the HSE.” He added that boardrooms might look at falling RIDDOR rates as evidence that “things are getting better” and a reason for possibly reducing investment in health and safety.

He advised the audience that, regardless of whether the change is brought in, they should continue to investigate over-three day cases to ensure they learn the lessons from all incidents – not least as employers’ insurers want as much information as possible about their clients’ safety regimes to help them defend potential civil claims.

“I urge you, no matter what happens, to make sure that your systems to trace and investigate O3Ds, O4Ds, O5Ds and O6Ds are effective and that, even though you might not have to report them under RIDDOR, you investigate them to get information to your insurers,” said Steffan.

The dangerous temptation not to investigate such incidents could lead to lower quality health and safety data and lessons for improvement slipping through the net, he warned.

For the HSE, however, the move could actually help it funnel its investigations in the direction of the most serious O7D incidents, so rather than an “advantage to businesses”, the change could help highlight poor-performing businesses to the HSE more so than is currently the case.

When looking at this alongside the HSE’s cost-recovery proposals, Steffan warned that the HSE needs to issue guidelines to inspectors so that an O7D incident does not automatically lead to an investigation, followed by an enforcement notice and cost recovery. Such an approach “would be a disincentive for employers to report O7D incidents” as they would know that they would have to pay a fee to the HSE post-investigation.

Summing up, Steffan described the change as a potential “backward step for health and safety, adding: “It’s another example of the chipping away of what health and safety is all about. It’s a slow erosion of what health and safety is built on – good quality statistics and data.”