HSE announces important legislation changes

Revisions to workplace injury reporting requirements and first-aid regulations come into effect

TWO revised health and safety regulations that will help businesses more easily comply with the law came into effect this week [1 October]. The reporting of workplace injuries (RIDDOR) has been simplified and greater flexibility has been introduced for managing the provision of first-aid training.

Both changes follow a review of health and safety legislation by Professor Ragnar Löfstedt in which he made a number of recommendations that the Government appointed the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) to implement.

First aid
The Health and Safety (First Aid) Regulations 1981 have been amended to remove the requirement for the HSE to approve first-aid training and qualifications.

The change is part of the HSE’s work to reduce the burden on businesses and put common sense back into health and safety, while maintaining standards. The new approach applies to businesses of all sizes and from all sectors, giving them more flexibility in how they manage the provision of first aid in the workplace.

Andy McGrory, the HSE’s policy lead for first aid, said: ‘The HSE no longer approves first-aid training and qualifications. Removing the HSE approval process will give businesses greater flexibility to choose their own training providers and first-aid training that is right for their workplace, based on their needs assessment and their individual business needs.’

He added that employers still have a legal duty to make arrangements to ensure their employees receive immediate attention if they are injured or taken ill at work.

Information, including the regulations document and a guidance document to help employers identify and select a competent training provider to deliver any first-aid training indicated by their first-aid needs assessment, is available on the HSE website.

The HSE will continue to set the standards for training. It says that while the changes give employers more flexibility, the one-day Emergency First Aid at Work (EFAW) and three-day First Aid at Work (FAW) courses remain the building blocks for first-aid training.

In addition, as part of the changes, the Approved Code of Practice (ACOP) text which was previously included in guidance document L74 (which consisted of only 12 sentences), has been incorporated into the new guidance.

The advice in the guidance sets out clearly the recommended practical actions needed, and the standards to be achieved, to ensure compliance with duties under the 1981 Regulations. This is intended as a comprehensive guide on ensuring compliance with the law.

RIDDOR
The HSE has this week also formally implemented changes to simplify the mandatory reporting of workplace injuries for businesses. The revisions to the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations (RIDDOR) 1995 clarify and simplify the reporting requirements, while ensuring that the data collected gives an accurate and useful picture of workplace incidents.

The changes affect all employers – including the self-employed – and new web-based information and guidance is now available on the HSE website.

The main changes are in the following areas:

The classification of ‘major injuries’ to workers has been replaced with a shorter list of

‘specified injuries’

The existing schedule detailing 47 types of industrial disease has been replaced with eight categories of reportable work-related illness
Fewer types of ‘dangerous occurrence’ require reporting.

There are no significant changes to the reporting requirements for:

• Fatal accidents
• Accidents to non-workers (ie members of the public)
• Accidents resulting in a worker being unable to perform their normal range of duties for more than seven days.

How an incident at work is reported and the criteria that determine whether an incident should be investigated remain the same.

Commenting on the impact of the changes, Dave Charnock, the HSE’s policy lead for the revisions to RIDDOR, explained: ‘Reporting under RIDDOR is a legal requirement for companies. RIDDOR reports, along with all other complaints and information received by the  HSE, will continue to be examined in conjunction with our Incident Selection Criteria to determine the need for investigations – this is not something new.

‘It will not alter the current ways to report an incident at work. The principles of what must be recorded remain largely unchanged – everything that is reportable must also be recorded (other than gas events), together with over-three-day lost-time accidents.

‘The aim is to simplify and clarify reporting requirements, whilst ensuring that a useful supply of information is retained, to provide sufficient data for the HSE and others to act in a risk-based manner, and to enable European and international obligations to be met.

‘The proposed changes will facilitate improved reporting of such information, whilst not requiring businesses to provide information that is either not used or could be better obtained from other sources,’ said Mr Charnock.