Health and Safety Law 2023 (November 2023)

Chapter 11

What is not reportable under RIDDOR?

[page 180]

The HSE advises that, while acts of non-consensual violence to a person at work that result in death, a major injury or being incapacitated for over-seven-days are reportable, a physical injury inflicted on one employee by another during a dispute about a personal matter, or an employee at work injured by a relative or friend who visits them at work about a domestic matter, is not reportable (see page 143).

It also says “stress” is not reportable as an occupational injury, even when accompanied by a medical certificate stating that it is work-related, because it does not relate to a single definable incident.

Suicides in the workplace are also not RIDDOR reportable, although there is a union-backed campaign to change this (pages 131-132) and neither are most road traffic incidents (see page 178).

There is also no obligation to report most Covid-19 cases under RIDDOR including:

• cases of disease or deaths of members of the public, patients, care home residents or service users from Covid-19;

• cases where an employee has infected another employee with coronavirus through general transmission in the workplace; and

• cases where a member of the public has infected an employee with coronavirus through general transmission in the workplace, unless infection is likely to have occurred from working in an environment with a person known to have Covid-19, for example in health or social care (see page 179).


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