RIDDOR Reportable Injuries: The 6 Categories, What Qualifies, and the Clock on Each

Something has happened at work, and you need one question answered quickly: is this reportable under RIDDOR? This guide is built for exactly that moment. RIDDOR, the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 2013, requires employers and those in control of premises to report certain work-related events to the enforcing authority, and the HSE's reportable incidents guidance is the definitive source this reference distils.

Two framing points before the categories. First, RIDDOR reporting sits on top of recording: minor incidents that are not reportable must still go in your accident book, and our guide to accident recording and RIDDOR compliance covers that layer. Second, the trigger is always work-relatedness: the event must arise out of or in connection with work activity, not merely happen at a workplace. With that, here are the six categories, each with what qualifies and the deadline attached.

Category 1: Deaths

What qualifies: the death of any person, worker or not, from a work-related accident, including acts of physical violence to a worker. Deaths of workers are also reportable when they occur within a year of the accident that caused them, even if the original injury was already reported.

The clock: report without delay by the quickest practicable means, with the full report submitted within 10 days. In practice, a work-related death means immediate notification and the near-certainty of investigation, which is why the quality of your records before that day matters so much.

Category 2: Specified injuries to workers

What qualifies: the list the regulations name specifically, and this is the category businesses most need to know cold. It includes fractures other than to fingers, thumbs and toes; amputations; injuries likely to cause permanent loss of sight or reduction of sight; crush injuries to the head or torso causing damage to the brain or internal organs; serious burns covering more than 10 percent of the body or damaging the eyes, respiratory system or other vital organs; scalpings requiring hospital treatment; loss of consciousness caused by head injury or asphyxia; and injuries from working in an enclosed space causing hypothermia, heat-induced illness, or requiring resuscitation or hospital admission of more than 24 hours.

The clock: report without delay, with the full report within 10 days. The common error here is under-classifying: a broken wrist is a specified injury, and "we thought it was just a bad sprain" is not a defence the deadline recognises, which argues for reporting on clinical confirmation rather than optimistic waiting.

Category 3: Over-seven-day incapacitation

What qualifies: a worker injured in a work-related accident who is incapacitated for more than seven consecutive days, unable to do their normal work duties, not counting the day of the accident but counting weekends and rest days. Note the trap in that definition: an employee who limps into the office on light duties still counts as incapacitated if they cannot perform their normal work.

The clock: this category has its own deadline, within 15 days of the accident. Over-three-day incapacitations must be recorded but not reported, which is the boundary that generates the most confusion in practice, and the reason your absence records and your incident records need to talk to each other.

Category 4: Injuries to non-workers

What qualifies: members of the public or other people not at work, injured in a work-related accident and taken directly from the scene to hospital for treatment. The hospital element is the filter: taken for treatment, not merely examined as a precaution, and the injury must arise from the work activity or the condition of the premises.

The clock: report without delay, full report within 10 days. For customer-facing businesses, retail, hospitality, visitor sites, this is the category most likely to catch you, and the judgement calls are genuinely harder because you rarely control what happens after the ambulance leaves.

Category 5: Occupational diseases

What qualifies: specified diseases diagnosed by a doctor as likely caused or made worse by work, including carpal tunnel syndrome, severe hand-arm vibration syndrome, occupational dermatitis, occupational asthma, tendonitis of the hand or forearm, and occupational cancers. Unlike the accident categories, these arrive slowly, through diagnosis rather than incident.

The clock: report without delay once the diagnosis is received. The practical challenge is upstream of the deadline: businesses only learn of diagnoses if there is a route for that information to arrive, which is where occupational health arrangements and honest absence conversations earn their keep.

Category 6: Dangerous occurrences

What qualifies: the near misses serious enough that the regulations name them, events that did not injure anyone but easily could have. The list includes the collapse, overturning or failure of lifting equipment; plant contact with overhead power lines; electrical incidents causing fire or explosion; the accidental release of substances that could cause injury; and structural collapses, among others.

The clock: report without delay, full report within 10 days. This is the category that tests culture rather than paperwork: a business only reports the dangerous occurrence it hears about, and a workforce that quietly resets the tripped machinery tells you nothing until the day it cannot.

The quick reference, assembled

Compressed to its essentials: deaths and specified injuries, without delay and within 10 days. Over-seven-day incapacitations, within 15 days. Non-workers taken to hospital, 10 days. Diagnosed occupational diseases, on diagnosis. Named dangerous occurrences, 10 days. Everything less serious still goes in the accident book, and reports go through the HSE's online reporting service. One scope note for international businesses: RIDDOR is UK law, and your sites elsewhere answer to their own reporting regimes with different lists and different clocks, from OSHA's in the United States to each European country's own, which is exactly the patchwork international health and safety consultants keep consistent, one world-class standard over many local rulebooks.

The system that makes the deadlines meetable

Every deadline above assumes something that fails more often than the reporting itself: that the business knew about the event in time, classified it correctly, and had the details ready. That is a system property, not a form-filling skill: incident capture people actually use, escalation that reaches the right person the same day, and records complete enough to report from directly. It is precisely where consultants and software work together, with qualified health and safety consultants setting the classifications and thresholds correctly and the platform capturing, escalating and evidencing every incident across every site, ready for the health and safety audits that test exactly this, and aligned with frameworks such as ISO 45001. For the regulation's wider context, our guide to what RIDDOR is completes the picture.

Where Arinite fits

Arinite has spent 15+ years making sure the worst day a business has is not also the day it discovers its records. We support 1,500+ businesses across 50+ countries and have helped protect 100,000+ employees, with a 95% client retention rate. As global health and safety consultants, we build the incident systems that make every deadline above routine, in the UK and in every jurisdiction you operate.

If reading the six categories raised any doubt about whether your business would catch, classify and report correctly under pressure, that doubt is worth resolving now. Our free gap analysis reviews your arrangements, incident reporting included, and tells you plainly where you stand. Book your free gap analysis and be ready before you need to be.