RIDDOR Reporting Rules: What Employers Must Do

RIDDOR reporting rules explained for UK employers: what to report, when to act, who reports and how to keep defensible incident records across sites.

A site manager receives a call: a contractor has fallen from a ladder and been taken to hospital. The immediate priority is care, making the area safe and preserving the facts. Soon after comes the question that creates avoidable pressure for many teams: do the RIDDOR reporting rules apply, and who is responsible for acting?

The answer depends on the injury, the work connection and the circumstances. RIDDOR is not a general accident-reporting system. It is a legal reporting regime for specified serious workplace events. Getting the decision right matters, but so does being able to show how that decision was reached.

RIDDOR Reporting Rules: Start with the Right Test

RIDDOR stands for the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 2013. It requires the "responsible person" to report certain work-related deaths, injuries, occupational diseases and dangerous occurrences to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).

For most employers, the responsible person is the employer or a person in control of work premises. In practice, a health and safety lead may submit the report, but accountability cannot be delegated away. Where contractors are involved, responsibilities can overlap. The contractor may be responsible for its employees, while the person controlling the premises may have separate duties. Establish this early rather than assuming another party has done it.

Before deciding whether an event is reportable, ask three questions. Was there an identifiable incident, was it work-related, and does it meet a RIDDOR reporting category? A trip in a staff car park, for example, may be work-related. A worker becoming unwell at work from an unrelated medical condition may not be. The facts, the condition of the workplace and the work activity all matter.

RIDDOR reporting is separate from internal incident records, insurance notifications, accident book entries and safeguarding procedures. One event may trigger all four. Recording an incident internally is necessary, but it does not replace a statutory report where one is required.

What Must Be Reported?

The reportable categories are specific. Teams should avoid two common errors: reporting every minor event through RIDDOR, or waiting until an investigation is complete before reporting a clearly reportable event.

The main categories include:

• Deaths resulting from a work-related accident, including deaths of workers and members of the public. There are limited exclusions, so seek competent advice where the circumstances are uncertain.
• Specified injuries to workers. These include fractures other than those to fingers, thumbs and toes; amputations; serious burns; loss of consciousness caused by head injury or asphyxia; and certain injuries involving confined spaces, crushing or sight loss.
• Injuries that leave a worker unable to do their normal work for more than seven consecutive days, not counting the day of the accident. This applies even where the injury is not on the specified-injury list.
• Injuries to non-workers, such as visitors, pupils or members of the public, where a work-related accident causes them to be taken directly to hospital for treatment. Being checked at hospital is not, by itself, the test.
• Diagnosed occupational diseases connected to the work. Examples include occupational asthma, dermatitis, hand-arm vibration syndrome, carpal tunnel syndrome linked to vibrating tools, and diseases caused by biological agents or occupational exposure.
• Dangerous occurrences. These are defined near-miss events with serious potential, such as the collapse of lifting equipment, contact with overhead power lines, fires or explosions that stop normal work for more than 24 hours, and certain releases of hazardous substances.

The dangerous occurrence list is detailed and some categories are industry-specific. Construction, manufacturing, utilities, laboratories and high-risk maintenance operations may have triggers that do not arise in a typical office environment. Your reporting process should reflect the hazards actually present at each site.

Deadlines Leave Little Room for Uncertainty

Deaths, specified injuries and dangerous occurrences must be reported without delay. The full report must be submitted within 10 days. For an over-seven-day injury, the report must be made within 15 days of the accident.

There is also a record-keeping requirement for injuries that result in more than three consecutive days of incapacity, even though they are not yet reportable unless the absence exceeds seven days. This is a frequent point of failure. If a worker is absent for four, five or seven days, the event still needs a clear internal record and follow-up.

Occupational diseases should be reported promptly once the responsible person receives a diagnosis from a doctor that identifies the condition and links it to the work activity. Do not wait for a lengthy internal review to finish. Report on the information available, then continue the investigation and corrective action.

Reports are normally made using the HSE reporting service. Keep a copy of the completed report and supporting records for at least three years. For a multi-site operator, that evidence should be accessible centrally, not held only in a manager's inbox or a local shared drive.

Build a Reporting Workflow That Works at 4 pm on a Friday

A compliant process has to work when the usual safety lead is off site, the facts are incomplete and several people are calling for updates. That means defining the workflow before an incident happens.

Start with immediate notification. Staff and contractors need a simple way to raise an incident, hazard or near miss from the point of work. Capture the date, location, people involved, activity, injury or potential harm, photographs where appropriate and initial controls. QR-code access at the asset or location can make this practical for frontline teams without adding another paper form.

Learn MoreIncidents & Accident ManagementHow the event is captured against the people and place involved, so the facts sit on the record before anyone judges reportability.

Next, assign a competent reviewer to triage the event against RIDDOR criteria. The decision should be visible: reportable, not reportable, or pending information. Record the reasoning, not just the outcome. If the conclusion is that a visitor was not taken directly to hospital for treatment, or that an absence did not exceed seven consecutive days, state that clearly.

Then separate statutory reporting from investigation. The reportable-event deadline controls the first task. The investigation should identify immediate causes, underlying failures and corrective actions, but it may take longer. Waiting for perfect evidence risks a late report; rushing the investigation risks superficial learning. These are different controls with different timescales.

Finally, route actions to named owners with due dates. A report that says a ladder was defective is only the start. The operational response may include quarantining the equipment, checking similar assets, reviewing pre-use inspections, briefing contractors and assessing whether supervision or training was adequate. Each action needs evidence of completion.

Learn MoreIssue Reporting & RequestsHow a follow-up from an incident becomes an assigned action, with evidence of completion staying on the record.

Applying RIDDOR Reporting Rules across Multiple Sites

Fragmented records make timely reporting harder than it needs to be. One site may call an event a near miss, another may record an injury only in an accident book, and head office may learn about it after the reporting window has passed.

A central incident register creates a consistent route from notification to decision, report, investigation and close-out. Site teams retain the ability to act quickly, while compliance leaders can see open cases, approaching deadlines, repeated causes and overdue corrective actions across the estate.

This is also where connected evidence changes the quality of the response. An incident record should sit alongside the relevant risk assessment, inspection history, maintenance records, contractor competence documents, training records and policy acknowledgement. If a lifting incident occurs, the question is not simply whether the event was reported. It is whether the equipment had a current thorough examination, whether daily checks were completed and whether the operator was authorised.

Learn MorePremises & Asset ManagementHow sites, rooms and assets sit in one estate structure, so the incident record points at the place and kit involved.

CalmCompliance brings those operational records into one controlled workflow, so the evidence assembles around the event rather than being chased across spreadsheets, emails and disconnected systems.

A Report Is Not the End of the Control

A RIDDOR report does not prove that an organisation has managed the risk well. It creates a formal record of a serious event and may prompt further regulatory contact. The stronger measure is what happens next: whether the cause is understood, controls are improved and leaders can verify that the change has reached every relevant site.

Treat each incident decision as a test of your management system. If your team can identify the responsible person, assess reportability, meet the deadline and retrieve the evidence without a scramble, you have more than a reporting process. You have control when it matters.