Accident book software for UK businesses

What an accident book is — and the legal duties behind it

UK employers must record workplace accidents and injuries. The Social Security (Claims and Payments) Regulations 1979 require many employers to keep an accident book, and recording accidents is essential evidence for employer's liability claims and for spotting patterns before they become serious. Separately, the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 2013 (RIDDOR) require certain accidents to be reported to the HSE.

So there are two distinct duties: record every accident, and report the ones that meet the RIDDOR threshold. A good accident book makes the first easy and flags the second automatically.

• Record: log every workplace accident and injury with the relevant detail.
• Report: identify and report RIDDOR events to the HSE within the legal deadlines.
• Retain: keep records for the periods required for claims and investigations.
• Protect data: keep injured persons' personal data secure and access-controlled.

A GDPR-compliant alternative to the paper accident book

Paper accident books are a data protection liability. When one person fills in a bound book, the next person can read the previous entries — names, injuries, medical details. That is why the official BI 510 accident book has removable pages: to stop personal data being exposed. In practice, paper books are easily mislaid, left open, or completed inconsistently.

A digital accident book solves this at the root. Each record is stored securely and scoped to your workspace, so one person's accident details are not on display to everyone who reports the next one. Entries are legible, consistent and complete, and nothing gets lost from a drawer.

• No exposed personal data: records are access-controlled, not visible to whoever opens a shared book.
• Consistent and complete: structured fields mean every entry captures what it should.
• Nothing lost: records are stored centrally, not in a book that can go missing.
• Searchable: find and produce any record instantly for a claim or inspection.

From accident record to RIDDOR report

The most commonly missed obligation is the RIDDOR report — especially the over-7-day injury, where a worker is off for more than seven consecutive days and the deadline quietly passes. Every entry in the accident book is screened against the RIDDOR 2013 criteria, so you know whether an accident is likely reportable, and your decision is recorded with its reasoning.

Over-7-day absences are flagged so the 15-day reporting window does not slip, and specified injuries are surfaced for immediate reporting. The accident book and the RIDDOR decision live together in one record.

• Automatic RIDDOR screening: each entry is checked against the RIDDOR 2013 categories.
• Over-7-day tracking: absences are flagged before the 15-day reporting deadline.
• Decision recorded: whether you report or not, the decision and reasoning are kept.

Investigate, action and defend

An accident record is the start of the response, not the end. Each entry captures what happened, the contributing factors and the remedial action taken, so you can investigate properly and close the loop. You can record near misses too — the free intelligence that lets you fix a hazard before it injures someone.

If an accident leads to an employer's liability claim, comprehensive, dated, GDPR-compliant records are exactly what your insurer and solicitor need. The audit trail shows you recorded, assessed and acted — your due-diligence defence.