RIDDOR requires employers to report certain work-related deaths, specified injuries, over-seven-day incapacitation, occupational diseases and dangerous occurrences to the HSE. Whether a specific incident is reportable depends on the circumstances, and our advisors help clients assess reportability and report correctly.

Make the area safe and get the injured person appropriate help, record the incident, report it to the HSE where RIDDOR applies, and preserve the evidence. Employers also owe ongoing duties to review what went wrong and prevent a repeat.

The business owes duties to employees and to the public, and health and safety law also places duties on directors and senior managers personally. Liability in any specific case turns on what was foreseeable, what precautions were in place and what can be evidenced.

Because the burden of proof effectively runs in reverse. Food safety offences generally apply unless the business can show it took all reasonable precautions and exercised due diligence, so the defence rests on the records you kept before anything went wrong. That evidence trail is exactly what the Mercury Platform builds every day.

Personal injury claims can generally be brought up to three years from the incident, and longer in some circumstances, so records and evidence should be kept at least that long, available for whenever an insurer, regulator or court asks.