Industrial Accidents: Death

(asked on 28th August 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent assessment she made of the (a) effectiveness of enhanced RIDDOR reporting, (b) potential merits of appointing a confidential reporting body for all near misses and accidents that do not qualify for RIDDOR reporting and (c) potential merits of extending Working Well Together safety campaigns to industries outside the construction sector to reduce the number of working at height fatalities.


Answered by
Mims Davies Portrait
Mims Davies
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
This question was answered on 8th September 2020

The 2019 report from the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for falls from height (FFH) made a number of recommendations to the Government to reduce fatal and serious injuries from FFH in the UK. Recommendations were subsequently considered at a Westminster Hall debate. The Minister for Disabled Persons, the Rt. Hon. Justin Tomlinson MP made a formal Ministerial statement setting out the Government response.

The APPG discussed the issue of enhanced RIDDOR reporting with The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and highlighted that the free text section of the online RIDDOR reporting form already allows for recording of the additional detail requested by the APPG. The access industry was tasked with considering industry guidance for using the free text section to improve intelligence and consistency of this data. HSE agreed to explore this further with the APPG.

The Ministerial Statement also confirmed HSE’s position on the APPG recommendation for the appointment of a confidential reporting body. HSE agreed that if such a body were to be set up, for it to be truly independent, it would need to be led by industry not HSE.

The possibility of extending Working Well Together (WWT) safety campaigns to other industries has been discussed by the WWT steering group. They felt that they wanted to stay focused on construction industries at present.

Reticulating Splines