The Accident Book — Recording Workplace Accidents in Your Trade Business (2026)

The Legal Duty to Record Accidents

The headline rule comes from the Social Security (Claims and Payments) Regulations 1979. Under those regulations, any business that employs 10 or more people must keep an accident book and record details of any accident causing personal injury at work. The standard form for this is the HSE's BI 510 — the official "Accident Book", which you can buy in print or replicate electronically.

If you have fewer than ten employees you are not strictly compelled by that specific regulation to keep the book — but recording accidents is firmly recommended as good practice for every employer, and most trades should treat it as a must-do regardless of headcount. Here is why: the records support your duties under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 and the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, they feed into your RIDDOR reporting decisions, and they are often the only contemporaneous evidence you have if an employee later brings a personal injury claim. A claim can land years after the event — a dated, signed entry written on the day is worth far more than a hazy memory in front of a solicitor.

In short: 10+ employees means it is a legal requirement; fewer than that means it is strongly advised and protects you. Either way, the right answer for a builder, electrician or plumber running a small firm is to keep one.

The Accident Book vs RIDDOR — Two Different Jobs

These two get muddled constantly, so it is worth being clear. They are not the same thing and one does not replace the other.

The accident book is your internal record. You log every accident and injury at work, however minor — the scraped knuckle, the twisted ankle, the splinter that needed a plaster. Nothing gets reported to anyone outside the business by filling it in; it simply lives in your records.

RIDDOR — the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 2013 — is the opposite end of the scale. RIDDOR requires you to report certain serious incidents to the HSE. You only report a small subset of what goes in the accident book. RIDDOR-reportable events broadly include:

• Deaths arising from a work accident
• Specified injuries (such as fractures other than to fingers, thumbs or toes; amputations; serious burns; loss of consciousness)
• Injuries that leave a worker incapacitated for more than 7 consecutive days (the over-7-day rule)
• Certain reportable occupational diseases
• Specified dangerous occurrences (near-miss events such as a scaffold collapse or a gas escape)

The practical takeaway: write everything in the accident book, then ask separately "does this also need a RIDDOR report?" A full RIDDOR walkthrough is a topic in its own right — the point here is that completing your accident book never removes the duty to report a serious incident to the HSE, and reporting under RIDDOR never removes the duty to record it internally.

What to Record for Every Accident

A good entry is complete enough that someone reading it in three years' time understands exactly what happened. The BI 510 prompts for most of this, but whether you use the printed book or an electronic version, every entry should capture the following.

If the injured person cannot fill the entry in themselves — because they have been taken to hospital, for instance — someone acting on their behalf can complete it. Get the injured person to check and confirm the account when they are able.

GDPR and Keeping Records Confidential

Accident records contain personal data and, because they describe an injury, special category health data under the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018. That carries obligations. Completed entries must be kept secure and confidential, and they should not be readable by other staff who happen to flick through the book.

This is exactly why the modern BI 510 has tear-out pages. Once an entry is completed, you remove it from the book and file it securely — so one person's name, address and injury are not on display to the next colleague who records an accident. An old-style bound book where everyone's details sit on the same visible pages does not meet current data-protection expectations. If you use a printed book, make sure it is a current tear-out version, and store the removed sheets in a locked drawer or secure file.

Only the people who genuinely need access — you as the employer, your health-and-safety lead, and where relevant your insurer — should be able to see completed records. Keep the personal data to what you actually need and do not leave the book lying open in the van or the site office.

How Long to Keep Accident Records

Keep completed accident records for at least 3 years from the date of the entry. That is the baseline most employers work to. But three years is a floor, not a ceiling, and there are good reasons to keep some records longer:

• Anything that might lead to a claim: personal injury claims can be brought up to three years from the date of knowledge of an injury, and the clock does not always start on the day of the accident. For an accident that could plausibly result in a claim, keep the record well beyond the minimum.
• Young persons: where the injured person was under 18 at the time, retain the record for longer — their right to claim can extend until three years after they turn 18.
• Disease and long-latency injuries: for conditions that develop over time (for example exposure-related illness), records may need to be kept for many years.

A sensible rule for a small firm: keep ordinary minor-accident records for three years, and keep anything involving a significant injury, a young worker, or a possible future claim for considerably longer. Storage costs nothing compared with being unable to evidence what happened.

Using an Electronic Accident Book

There is no requirement to use paper. An electronic accident book is perfectly acceptable provided it captures the same information and meets the same confidentiality and retention standards. For a trade business with operatives spread across sites, an electronic system is often more practical — an injured worker or supervisor can log an accident from a phone on site, the record is timestamped, and you avoid a single paper book going missing in the back of a van.

If you go electronic, make sure the system: restricts access so one person's record is not visible to all staff (the digital equivalent of tear-out pages); stores data securely with appropriate backups; and lets you retain and retrieve entries for the required periods. The legal duties do not change because the record is on a screen rather than on paper.

Why Near Misses and Minor Accidents Matter

It is tempting to only write down the accidents that drew blood. Resist it. Recording near misses and minor accidents is one of the most useful things a small firm can do, because patterns show up long before a serious injury does. Three people tripping on the same length of trailing lead in a month is a warning. One person eventually breaking a wrist on it is what happens if you ignore the warning.

The accident book should not sit in a drawer gathering entries that nobody ever looks at. Link it to your risk assessments and review the trends regularly. If a particular task, tool or part of a site keeps generating entries, that is a signal your risk assessment for that activity needs updating — new controls, different equipment, better sequencing or fresh toolbox talks. A live accident book that actually changes how you work is the difference between a paperwork exercise and a real safety system.

What to Do After an Accident

When something does go wrong on site, work through it in order. A simple, repeatable sequence stops people from forgetting a step in the heat of the moment.

• Treat the injured person first. Administer first aid, and call 999 or get them to A&E if the injury is serious. Nothing else comes before this.
• Secure the scene. Make the area safe so no one else is hurt — isolate power, cordon off the hazard, stop the task. If it is a serious incident, preserve the scene where you can so it can be investigated.
• Record it. Complete the accident book entry the same day while the detail is fresh, capturing everything in the table above.
• Investigate. Work out why it happened — not to assign blame, but to find the root cause and fix it. Update your risk assessment and brief the team.
• Report under RIDDOR if needed. Check whether the incident meets the RIDDOR threshold and, if it does, report it to the HSE within the required timescale.

Keep it practical. You do not need a safety department to do this well — you need a current accident book, a habit of filling it in the same day, and a quick review of the entries every few weeks to catch the patterns before they catch you.

Quick Reference: Accident Recording for Trade Businesses