Accident at work, who's responsibility?

brightonman123

the company has overall responsibility. claim from them, name contractor (if known) in any claim.

hope recover soon.

dickydonkin

sitesafe wrote: »

As well as being reported as an accident at work it should also be reported as a RIDDOR because it has resulted in your husband being off work for than 7 consecutive days but that should have been done within 14 days. A RIDDOR is the reporting of an accident that falls into a specific criteria
- and an accident reported this way can sometimes fall into more than one RIDDOR category. E.g. The being off work for more than 7 days is one, but the collapse of lifting equipment (just an example) is another. I can't recall if it means reporting it separately for each criteria or if it can all be done on the same form but the employer should know about this.
I think you best bet is to contact HSE and RIDDOR yourselves for a more accurate explanation http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/indg453.pdf

Some of this is incorrect.

Due to the unknown injuries sustained, as the injured person was hospitalised, it is very possible the report could potentially come under the 'specified injury' element of RIDDOR which would need to be reported within 10 days.

Incidentally, an 'over seven day injury' needs to be reported within 15 days - not 14 as implied in your post.

Examples of 'specified injuries' that may apply here are fractures (not including fingers/thumbs/toes) and loss of consciousness due to a head injury, however, without the full facts, it is not possible to determine what criteria applies to the injuries.

As for the 'dangerous occurrences', element of the legislation, this would not apply due to the fact that such incidents only need to be reported when there was 'potential' to cause serious injury or death.

Certainly a failure of lifting equipment would be deemed as a dangerous occurrence when there was potential to cause harm, however, an injury caused by such an event would be submitted as such as determined by the type of injury.

Having seeing it happen before, I wonder if the steel had slipped from its sling or the sling failed.

As for liability, I would rather not speculate without knowing the full facts, however, it is blatantly apparent there has been a serious safety failure by someone! Was he working on his own companies premises? - then if so, then as duty holder, the liability potentially lies with his employer.

It does sound like it was site work - again, speculation, but more information is required to determine how the accident occurred, where it was and what happened.

With such a serious incident, an accident investigation must have been carried out by someone - but then again, not enough information provided.

A starting point would be to discover the 'responsible person' who submitted the RIDDOR report, and as someone suggested to get a copy (assuming one has been submitted), nowadays, this is an onerous procedure due to data protection.

I would suggest a personal injury lawyer is the next logical step and hope the OP's husband has a swift recovery with no long term repercussions.

sitesafe

dickydonkin wrote: »

Some of this is incorrect.


Incidentally, an 'over seven day injury' needs to be reported within 15 days - not 14 as implied in your post..

Oops - a bit embarrassing- have edited - thanks

dickydonkin

sitesafe wrote: »

Oops - a bit embarrassing- have edited - thanks

Some of the legislation can confuse anyone!!🙂🙂