ACCORDING to The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, only 40% of major occupational accidents are reported each year even though informing the Health & Safety Executive about such incidents is a legal requirement.

Workplace equipment provider Slingsby, which supplies more than 35,000 products to all industries including a wide range of health and safety related equipment, believes that many people are unaware of the importance of reporting and logging accidents.

Under the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 1995 (RIDDOR) employers must report all serious workplace accidents, occupational diseases and dangerous occurrences, or near misses, as they happen.

Lee Wright, Marketing Director of Slingsby says: “By law all employers are required to keep suitable records about accidents and injuries that happen at work. All serious work-related accidents, such as broken bones, diseases, dangerous incidents or any other injury that stops an employee from doing their job for more than three days, must be reported to the Health and Safety Executive.

“In addition every accident, even if it’s very minor, should be recorded in an accident book. This must contain full details about a workplace accident including the date and time, the people involved, the nature of the injuries and how the accident happened. However the fact that so few serious accidents are reported suggests a lot of workplace accident books are sat collecting dust.”

Lee adds: “Recording accidents is very important and is often of benefit to employees because if they need time off, or struggle to recover from a workplace accident, then there is a written record of what happened. The accident book is also a useful reference tool to show employers where improvements need to be made in order to improve their safety records.”