RIDDOR Reporting: A Practical Guide for UK Employers

RIDDOR — the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 2013 — places a legal duty on employers to report certain workplace incidents to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). Most employers know the name; far fewer are confident about exactly what needs reporting, when, and how. Here’s a practical breakdown, including the reform proposals HSE consulted on earlier this year.

What is RIDDOR?

RIDDOR requires “responsible persons” — typically employers, but also the self-employed and those in control of premises — to report specified workplace incidents to the HSE. The purpose is to help the HSE identify where and how risks arise, so that trends can be spotted and prevention improved across industries. As of September 2026, the current rules below are unchanged and still legally binding — a reform is in the pipeline (see below), but nothing has changed yet.

What must be reported

Not every workplace accident is reportable. Broadly, RIDDOR covers:

• Work-related deaths — always reportable, and reportable immediately by the quickest practicable means.
• Specified injuries — including fractures (other than to fingers, thumbs and toes), amputations, loss of sight, crush injuries to the head or torso, and serious burns.
• Over-seven-day incapacitation — where an employee or self-employed person is unable to carry out their normal work duties for more than seven consecutive days as a result of a workplace injury (not counting the day of the accident itself).
• Occupational diseases — such as certain skin conditions, hand-arm vibration syndrome, and occupational asthma, where a doctor confirms a diagnosis linked to work.
• Dangerous occurrences — near-misses that didn’t result in injury but had the potential to, such as the collapse of scaffolding, plant or equipment failure involving pressure systems, or an unintended explosion.

Minor injuries requiring first aid only, and injuries resulting in fewer than seven days off, are not reportable under RIDDOR — though they should still be logged in your workplace accident book.

Reporting timescales

Timing matters and varies by incident type:

• Deaths and specified injuries must be reported without delay, and a follow-up written report submitted within 10 days.
• Over-seven-day incapacitation must be reported within 15 days of the accident.
• Dangerous occurrences and certain diseases should also be reported without delay once you become aware of them.

RIDDOR reform: what’s coming (but not yet law)

HSE ran a public consultation on modernising RIDDOR between 7 April and 30 June 2026. Nothing has changed yet — implementation isn’t expected before 2027, and possibly not until 2028 — but the direction of travel is worth knowing now:

• Clearer definitions. HSE wants to formally define “work-related” and “injury,” partly because an estimated 8.2% of 2024/25 RIDDOR submissions turned out to be ineligible once reviewed — a sign the current rules generate genuine confusion, not just employer carelessness.
• A much longer disease list. The reportable occupational disease list would grow from 6 to 19 conditions, reinstating nine previously-removed diseases (including asbestosis and pneumoconiosis) and adding four new ones, such as noise-induced hearing loss.
• More people able to diagnose. Currently only registered doctors can confirm a reportable occupational disease. The proposal would extend this to registered nurses and physiotherapists.
• New dangerous occurrence categories, including falling objects from structures, construction plant overturning, and tunnelling incidents.
• A simplified online reporting form, with the aim of cutting the submission errors that drive that 8.2% ineligibility rate.

Nothing to act on yet, but worth flagging to whoever owns H&S reporting in your business, since the changes — when they land — will widen what needs reporting rather than narrow it.

Common employer mistakes

The most frequent errors we see are under-reporting near-misses (treating “nothing happened” as “nothing to report,” when dangerous occurrences are reportable regardless of injury), miscounting the seven-day incapacitation period (the day of the accident itself doesn’t count), and delaying reports while waiting for full details — the initial report can be made promptly and updated later.

Getting it wrong isn’t just a compliance risk. If HSE visits and finds a material breach of health and safety law, it can charge Fee for Intervention (FFI) at £188 per hour (the rate from 1 April 2026) to cover its time investigating and helping you put things right — on top of whatever the underlying issue costs to fix.

A quick RIDDOR checklist

• Do you have a clear internal process for flagging potential RIDDOR incidents to whoever manages reporting?
• Does everyone with supervisory responsibility know the difference between a reportable dangerous occurrence and a routine near-miss?
• Is your accident book kept up to date for injuries that fall below the RIDDOR threshold?
• Do you review incident data periodically to spot patterns, not just tick the reporting box?

Getting RIDDOR right isn’t about reporting everything — it’s about knowing precisely where the legal line sits, and having a process that catches genuine incidents without panic or delay.

How PeopleFirstHR can help

PeopleFirstHR isn’t a health & safety consultancy, so we won’t make the reportability call on a specific incident for you — but we can help in two practical ways, through the partners we work with:

• Astute’s Accident Investigation and RIDDOR e-learning courses. Delivered through our Astute e-learning partnership, these give supervisors and managers a structured, repeatable way to investigate incidents properly and recognise what’s reportable — reducing the “did we need to report that?” guesswork at the point it actually matters.
• Confidential H&S advisory support. For a second opinion on a specific incident, or help building a clearer internal RIDDOR process, our partner WorkNest provides dedicated health & safety advisory services for UK SMEs.