3.1 Accident and Incident Reporting

Policy

All accidents and incidents with the potential to cause serious harm or damage, and all accidents involving injury must be reported.

Purpose

To ensure that injured persons are treated correctly, dangerous situations are made safe, the health of individuals is not put at risk, corrective and preventative action is taken, and statutory requirements are fulfilled.

Responsibilities

• Staff responsible for the activity or area must investigate the accident or incident and take appropriate corrective and preventative action
• The Health and Safety department ensures that there are adequate arrangements for accident reporting and investigating accidents, maintenance of central records, and formal reporting to the Health & Safety Executive
• Sickness absence resulting from an accident or work-related ill health condition must be reported to the Health and Safety department by the individual’s manager on an Accident and Incident Report Form in addition to normal sickness absence reporting procedures

 Procedure and Guidance

• 1. Accidents and incidents are unplanned or unexpected events which result in or have the potential to result in damage, injury, health disorder, death, damage to equipment or property, or interruption to business.
• 2. Anyone can raise an Accident and Incident Report using either the accident report form downloadable from the staff website for those staff who do not have access to a computer, or by logging on to www.rivosafeguard.com and completing the online accident/incident report.
• 3. Contractors are responsible for reporting to the Health & Safety Executive any injuries to their employees or dangerous occurrences arising from their use of their equipment. All other reportable incidents will be reported to the Health & Safety Executive by the Head of Health & Safety at the university.
• 4. The head of department must ensure that remedial actions are taken and are signed off.

As long as there are ongoing concerns arising from specific accidents requests for follow-up actions will be issued by the Health & Safety function to the head of department for completion and return. The purpose is to identify the final outcome in terms of injury or damage and to confirm what corrective action has been taken.