Firms crack-down on accident reports

Contractors are stopping staff from making direct entries into site accident books and incident report forms because of a dramatic increase in no win, no fee damages claims against them.
CJ has learnt that many contractors are insisting that managers fill in the documents with employees present, to ensure that no biased information is added to the forms that might give extra weight to future damages claims.
Previously workers would fill in the documents and the safety manager in charge of the project was responsible for passing the information to the Health & Safety Executive (HSE).
However, given a dramatic rise in the number of law firms offering no win, no fee services, contractors are taking emergency measures to cover their backs as claims start to soar.
The Law Society told CJ the number of no win, no fee cases were unknown.
Ringway told CJ that the company has introduced the new methods to help tackle problems relating to incident reporting in the past.
"We now ensure that managers fill in the documents, but have the worker involved next to them to make sure the story is straight," said Ringway health and safety manager David Campbell.
"We decided to take this step because of problems we have had in the past with workers filling in their own documents.
"However, we believe in a no-blame culture and take health and safety very seriously. This is not about stopping employees telling the truth."
Another contractor told CJ: "We had to take the measure as we were being taken to the cleaners by some operatives who had received advice from no win, no fee firms thinking they could make some easy wins.
"We now ensure supervisors fill in the form correctly but ensure the employee is happy with what has been submitted.
"This is just adding further fuel to the fire of an industry that is already highly litigious."
An HSE spokesman said: "I can see there being an issue in relation to the accident book, which is the employee's responsibility to fill in. For any civil claims the incident would have to have been reported in the accident book."