Changes to injury reporting rules
From the 6th April 2012, the rules relating to the reporting of workplace injuries have changed.
It used to be the case that employers were required to report any injury at work that incapacitates an employee for 3 or more consecutive days. The report had to be made within 10 days of the relevant incident.
These rules have now been relaxed a little. Going forwards, a report only needs to be made if the employee is incapacitated for more than 7 consecutive days, and the report must be made within 15 days of the date of the injury.
These rules apply to the “employer”, or where there is no employer, the person that has control over the work site. For agencies this means that the rules apply in respect of injuries to internal staff, but where agency workers are injured it would normally be the hirer client that is responsible, other than when the agency has supervisory control (usually not). That is, of course, subject to contracts, so do watch out for provisions in client-drafted contracts that may purport to pass on the injury reporting obligations to the agency.
Author: Will Morris
Adrian, a highly experienced lawyer, founded Lawspeed in 1997. He is responsible for developing our extensive portfolio of products and services, including the widely used Lawspeed contract templates. Adrian is an expert on “recruitment law” and specialises in contracts, regulatory compliance, employment status and dispute handling. He is chair of the trade body the Association of Recruitment Consultancies, the only lawyer lead recruitment trade body in the UK. Adrian and his co-director Ravi devised Standards in Recruitment as a vehicle for helping drive up standards and compliance in the industry.
Adrian is our lead in discussions with the government over regulatory evolution. Apart from assisting with client support, Adrian’s primary role is research and development into methods of business delivery, our latest service Proterms being his most recent project. Adrian heads our IR35 lawyers team.