Accident Investigation

Investigation of workplace accidents and incidents is an essential part of the proactive management of health and safety. Trend analysis of and accurate information about previous accidents and near misses helps in the development of improvement objectives to prevent them recurring.

There is no explicit legal duty to investigate accidents but certain regulations do imply the need to carry out accident investigations:

• The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 imply that investigating the causes of workplace accidents is considered an essential part of good health and safety management, and of the risk assessment review process. It forms the “check” part of the Plan, Do, Check, Act approach in the HSE’s HSG65 Managing for Health and Safety.

• The Social Security (Claims and Payments) Regulations 1987, as amended, require an employer to take reasonable steps to investigate the circumstances of every accident that is reported.

Ideally, investigation and review should take place for all accidents and incidents but in practice this is not always possible. It is important that organisations take a sensible and proportionate approach to the investigation of accidents. It is important that near misses with the potential for injury are investigated. These are incidents where an unplanned event occurs for which there is no resultant injury or damage, but the potential exists for harm to result if the event occurred under different circumstances.