The accident book: who must keep one, what to record, and how long to keep it

Do you have to keep an accident book?

Yes, if you employ ten or more people. The duty comes from the Social Security (Claims and Payments) Regulations 1979, which require employers with ten or more employees at any one time to keep a book in which employees can record accidents. It applies regardless of how dangerous the work is: an office with twelve staff needs one just as much as a joinery. Owners of mines, quarries and factories must keep one whatever their headcount.

Below ten employees the accident book is not a legal requirement in itself, but the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 and the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 still expect you to have effective arrangements for managing health and safety, and the RIDDOR duties below apply to every employer. In practice almost every small business keeps a record of accidents because insurers, clients and solicitors ask for it.

What an accident book entry must contain

The regulations set out the particulars. An entry must record:

• The full name, address and occupation of the injured person.
• The date and time of the accident.
• The place where it happened.
• The cause and nature of the injury.
• The name, address and occupation of the person making the entry, if it wasn’t the injured person.
• The date the entry was made.

Employees are entitled to make an entry themselves, or to have someone make it on their behalf. You cannot refuse to let an employee record an accident, and you cannot edit their entry afterwards, although you can add your own investigation notes alongside it.

Near misses and non-injury incidents don’t have to go in the accident book, but recording them somewhere is how you find out what’s going to injure someone next month. Most businesses that move to a digital system record accidents, near misses and observations in the same place for that reason.

The HSE accident book (BI 510)

The HSE publishes the standard accident book, form BI 510. It exists because of a data protection problem: an ordinary bound book lets anyone who opens it read every other entry, which the Information Commissioner ruled unacceptable in 2003. BI 510 has perforated pages, so each completed entry is torn out and filed securely, and only a blank page is left in the book.

You don’t have to use BI 510. Any format that records the required particulars and protects the personal data in them is acceptable, which is why a digital accident book is a legitimate option.

How long to keep accident records

Three years from the date of the last entry. That is the retention period in the 1979 regulations, and it matches the general three-year limitation period for personal injury claims, which is the practical reason it exists. Many employers keep records longer, and where an injury could give rise to a claim from a minor, or an industrial disease that develops slowly, keep them well beyond three years.

If you use a paper book, that means filing torn-out pages somewhere secure and findable for three years. If you use a digital system, it means not deleting records and keeping access controlled.

Where RIDDOR fits

The accident book and RIDDOR are two separate duties that are often confused. The accident book is an internal record of every accident. RIDDOR (the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 2013) is a duty to report a defined subset of incidents to the HSE, on a deadline.

What happened	Report to the HSE?	Deadline
Death of a worker, or of a non-worker caused by work	Yes	Without delay; the online form within 10 days
A “specified injury”: fractures other than fingers, thumbs and toes; amputations; loss of sight; crush injuries to the head or torso; serious burns; scalping; loss of consciousness from head injury or asphyxia; injuries from confined-space work	Yes	Without delay; the online form within 10 days
A dangerous occurrence (a defined list of near misses such as scaffold collapse, lifting-equipment failure or an electrical incident causing fire)	Yes	Without delay; the online form within 10 days
An injury that keeps a worker off normal duties for more than seven consecutive days, not counting the day of the accident	Yes	Within 15 days of the accident
An injury that keeps a worker off for more than three days but not more than seven	No, but it must be recorded (the accident book counts)	–
A member of the public taken directly to hospital for treatment from the incident	Yes	Without delay; the online form within 10 days
An occupational disease diagnosed by a doctor (carpal tunnel, occupational dermatitis, occupational asthma and others)	Yes	As soon as practicable after the diagnosis
Everything else: minor cuts, sprains, a day or two off	No	Record in the accident book

Reports are made on the HSE’s online RIDDOR service. Fatal and major incidents can also be reported by phone. You must keep a record of every RIDDOR report for three years, which the accident book entry plus a copy of the submitted report satisfies.

Accident book and GDPR

An accident book entry is personal data, and an injury is health data, which the UK GDPR treats as special category data. That has three practical consequences:

• Entries must not be readable by other employees. Hence the tear-out pages, or role-based access in software.
• Completed records need to be stored securely, whether that is a locked cabinet or an access-controlled system, and kept only as long as you need them.
• The injured person can ask for a copy of their entry, and you should give it to them.

Paper or digital?

A paper BI 510 costs a few pounds and satisfies the law. It has three weaknesses. Nobody can see a pattern in a pile of torn-out pages. The RIDDOR deadline lives in someone’s head. And the investigation, if it happens, lives in a different folder from the entry that started it.

A digital accident book keeps the entry, the photos, the witness statements, the investigation and the corrective actions on one record, restricts who can read it, calculates the RIDDOR deadline from the incident date, and shows you which site has three slips in a month. The legal requirements are the same: the required particulars, the employee’s right to make an entry, three years’ retention, and protection of the personal data.

A checklist for the person who owns the accident book

1. Confirm you have a book, or a system, and everyone knows where it is.
2. Make sure every employee knows they can record an accident, and how.
3. Check each entry has the six required particulars.
4. On the day of an accident, decide whether it is RIDDOR-reportable and note the deadline.
5. Report to the HSE online where required, and keep a copy of the report with the entry.
6. Store completed entries securely for at least three years.
7. Review the entries monthly for patterns: the same site, the same task, the same time of day.