RIDDOR accident reporting: what UK hospitality must report
General information for UK hospitality operators, not legal advice. If something here is wrong or out of date, the editorial policy explains how to report it.
RIDDOR accident reporting runs on three deadlines: without delay, 10 days and 15 days. What a UK hospitality venue must report and record.
RIDDOR accident reporting runs on three deadlines: a work-related death or a specified injury to a worker must be notified to the enforcing authority without delay, the written report of that incident must follow within 10 days, and an injury that keeps a worker off their normal duties for more than seven consecutive days must be reported within 15 days of the accident. All three sit in RIDDOR 2013, and the mistake that costs hospitality operators most often is treating the accident book entry as the report, so nothing is ever submitted at all.
Kitchens and bars produce exactly the injuries the regulations were drawn around. Hot oil, mandolins, wet quarry tiles, kegs on cellar drops and the stairs between the two generate burns, deep cuts, fractures and manual-handling damage, and several of those clear the reporting bar on the day they happen rather than weeks later.
What RIDDOR accident reporting actually covers
The Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 2013 put the duty on the responsible person, meaning the employer, certain self-employed people, or whoever controls the work premises. HSE groups the reportable events into the types of reportable incident: the death of any person, specified injuries to workers, over-seven-day incapacitation of a worker, non-fatal injuries to people who are not at work but are taken straight to hospital for treatment, diagnosed occupational diseases, dangerous occurrences and certain gas incidents.
Jurisdiction matters before any of the thresholds do. RIDDOR 2013 is Great Britain legislation, applied outside Great Britain only through regulation 19 and the offshore application order. A venue in Belfast or Derry works instead to the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations (Northern Ireland) 1997, which run on their own numbering, so a group operating on both sides of the Irish Sea cannot use one internal procedure and assume it covers every site.
Specified injuries and the without-delay duty
Specified injuries are listed in regulation 4 and are reportable however well the person seems afterwards. They are fractures other than to fingers, thumbs and toes; amputation of an arm, hand, finger, thumb, leg, foot or toe; any injury likely to cause permanent blinding or reduction of sight in one or both eyes; any crush injury to the head or torso causing damage to the brain or internal organs; serious burns, including scalding, that cover more than 10 per cent of the body or cause significant damage to the eyes, respiratory system or other vital organs; any scalping requiring hospital treatment; any loss of consciousness caused by head injury or asphyxia; and any injury from working in an enclosed space that leads to hypothermia or heat-induced illness, or requires resuscitation or admittance to hospital for more than 24 hours.
Two of those land in hospitality more often than the rest. A scald from a stockpot or a fryer is measured against the 10 per cent body surface test rather than against how bad it looked at handover, and a walk-in freezer counts as the kind of enclosed space where hypothermia is foreseeable. The duty is two-stage: notify the enforcing authority by the quickest practicable means without delay, then send the report itself within 10 days of the incident. A duty manager who is unsure should notify and check afterwards, because the without-delay limb cannot be met retrospectively.
The over-seven-day threshold and the 15-day deadline
A separate route opens when an injury that looked minor keeps someone off. Where a worker is away from work, or unable to do their normal duties, for more than seven consecutive days because of a work-related accident, the report must reach the enforcing authority within 15 days of the accident. The seven-day count excludes the day of the accident but includes weekends and rest days, and days the injured person would not normally have been expected to work still count. A part-time server rostered twice a week can therefore cross the threshold well before the rota suggests.
Where the injury or condition does not become apparent immediately, the clock starts from the point it has prevented normal duties for more than seven consecutive days. There is a longer tail as well: if a worker suffers a reportable injury and dies of it within one year of the accident, the death must be reported as a work-related fatality even though the injury was reported at the time.
The 15-day window is where venues fall down, because nobody owns the follow-up. A chef signed off with a wrist injury returns on light duties, light duties are not normal duties, and by the time anyone counts the days the deadline has gone. Tying the count to the return-to-work conversation, rather than to the incident itself, is what closes it.
The over-three-day record that stays in-house
Below the reporting threshold sits a recording duty that is easy to miss. Where an accident leaves a worker away from work or unable to do their normal duties for more than three consecutive days, excluding the day of the accident, the responsible person must keep a record under regulation 12, but no report goes to the enforcing authority. HSE states that recording it in the accident book, kept under social security law, is enough, and that duty comes from the Social Security (Claims and Payments) Regulations 1979 rather than from RIDDOR itself.
Regulation 12 also fixes how long the entry survives: every record must be kept for at least three years from the date it was made, at the place where the work is carried on or at the responsible person's usual place of business. That three-year floor is the reason the three-day cases matter. They are frequently the only contemporaneous account of an incident that a claim revives long after the manager who wrote it has moved on.
| Category | Action | Deadline |
|---|---|---|
| Death or specified injury to a worker | Notify, then report | Notify without delay; report within 10 days |
| Non-worker taken from the scene to hospital for treatment | Notify, then report | Notify without delay; report within 10 days |
| Over seven consecutive days off normal duties | Report | Within 15 days of the accident |
| Over three consecutive days off normal duties | Record only | Entry at the time; kept at least three years |
Customers, dangerous occurrences and gas
Hospitality carries a category most workplaces rarely touch, because the public is on the premises. An accident to a customer, a contractor or a volunteer is reportable where it arises from work activity, causes an injury, and the person is taken directly from the scene to hospital for treatment of that injury. Examinations and diagnostic tests such as X-rays do not count as treatment; a dressing, stitches, a plaster cast or surgery do. Someone taken in purely as a precaution, with no apparent injury, is not reportable.
Dangerous occurrences are the near misses listed in Schedule 2, and they are reportable whether or not anyone was hurt. Gas has its own route as well: distributors, fillers, importers and suppliers of flammable gas must report incidents connected with that gas where a person has died, lost consciousness or been taken to hospital for treatment, and Gas Safe registered engineers must report appliances or fittings they consider dangerous. Occupational disease is the quiet one in kitchens, where occupational dermatitis from regular exposure to a known skin sensitiser or irritant, and tendonitis or tenosynovitis of the hand or forearm from frequent repetitive movements, are reportable once a doctor diagnoses them.
The conditions behind a dangerous occurrence tend to be the same ones a proper fire risk assessment surfaces, which is why the two exercises belong on the same walk round. Our guide to fire risk assessment in hospitality sets out how that assessment is built and recorded.
Who reports, and what the record must hold
The report is the responsible person's to make, not the injured worker's, and in practice the general manager or duty manager submits it through HSE's online reporting system. Regulation 12 sets out what the record has to carry, and the particulars are unglamorous: the date, time and place of the event, personal details of the people involved, the nature of the injury or disease, and the date and method by which it was reported. Evidence gathered at the time, such as witness names, photographs of the floor or the equipment, and a note of the first aid given, is what makes that record defensible, which is why it should sit alongside a properly assessed level of first aid provision.
Most of these incidents trace back to a hazard that a current assessment should already name, whether that is the wet floor by the pot wash or the caustic oven cleaner in the store cupboard, and Zynthio holds those as structured COSHH and venue risk assessments with a named assessor, a signature and a review date. A free RIDDOR reportability checker is the quicker way to test a single incident against the thresholds before the 15-day clock runs down.
Questions to ask your own venue
Three questions are worth putting to your own operation. If a kitchen porter went off injured today, who counts the days against the seven-day threshold, and would anyone notice the 15-day deadline passing. For the three-day and five-day cases that never reach the enforcing authority, is there an accident book entry for each one, written at the time rather than reconstructed. And if a customer was taken from the floor to hospital last month, was that treated as reportable or quietly filed as an insurance matter.
Zynthio keeps the accident book as a Core module rather than as part of its COSHH and risk assessment software. Entries carry a per-organisation reference number, the injured person's details, witnesses, first aid and hospital treatment, days absent and a status of open, under investigation or closed. RIDDOR is built into the record as a reportable flag, category, reference and reported date, with a suggested answer offered as decision support that never overwrites the flag a human has set. Entries are retained for three years and soft-deleted, matching regulation 12, and they export as a per-accident claims pack, a full accident book per site and year, or a site disclosure pack.
Frequently asked questions
Does a slip that causes no injury need to be reported under RIDDOR?
No. Reporting is triggered by injury, by a diagnosed occupational disease, or by one of the dangerous occurrences listed in Schedule 2 of the regulations, not by the slip itself. A near miss with no injury is still worth logging internally so the risk assessment can be revisited, but it does not go to the enforcing authority unless it meets the Schedule 2 definition.
What counts as a specified burn injury in a kitchen?
A burn or scald is a specified injury where it covers more than 10 per cent of the body, or causes significant damage to the eyes, respiratory system or other vital organs. A small scald treated with first aid and a return to the section is not reportable on that basis, but it still belongs in the accident book, and it becomes reportable on the separate route if the person is later off normal duties for more than seven consecutive days.
Who is legally responsible for making the RIDDOR report?
The duty sits with the responsible person, which means the employer, certain self-employed people, or whoever is in control of the work premises. In a venue that is normally the general manager or duty manager submitting through HSE's online system, but the legal consequence of a missed report falls on the business rather than on the individual who filled in the form.
How long do RIDDOR records and accident book entries have to be kept?
Regulation 12 requires the record of a reportable incident, a reportable diagnosis or an over-three-day injury to be kept for at least three years from the date the entry was made, held at the place where the work is carried on or at the usual place of business. Many operators keep them for longer, because a personal injury claim can arrive well after that three-year floor has expired.
Is the seven-day count in calendar days or working days?
Calendar days. The day of the accident is excluded, weekends and rest days are included, and days the person would not normally have been expected to work still count towards the total. A worker injured on a Monday who cannot return to normal duties until the Wednesday of the following week has been incapacitated for more than seven consecutive days, and the report is then due within 15 days of the accident.