RIDDOR and Health & Safety Duties for Transport Operators

RIDDOR requires certain categories of workplace incident to be reported to HSE: work-related deaths, specified injuries (a defined list including fractures other than to fingers/thumbs/toes, amputations, and others), injuries causing over 7 days' incapacitation, certain occupational diseases, and specified 'dangerous occurrences' — near-misses that could have caused serious harm, even where no one was actually hurt.

A near-miss with no specified dangerous occurrence and no injury isn't RIDDOR-reportable — but it's still exactly the kind of thing a competent operator should be recording and acting on, because the same conditions caused it whether or not anyone was hurt this time.

Separately from RIDDOR, the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 places a general duty on employers to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare of employees and anyone else affected by the work — drivers, warehouse staff, visitors, and members of the public.

The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 add the requirement for suitable and sufficient risk assessments, covering the real hazards of a transport operation: vehicle movements in the yard, loading and unloading, work at height on trailers, manual handling, lone working, and driving itself.

Yard vehicle movements (reversing, coupling/uncoupling) are a recurring source of serious incidents in this sector — a risk assessment that hasn't been reviewed since the site layout changed is a common gap.

Drug and alcohol testing policy, where one exists, needs to actually be followed and evidenced — a policy that exists on paper but isn't demonstrably applied doesn't hold up well under scrutiny after an incident.