Phoenix Journal · LEV Testing
RIDDOR turns a vague worry into three clear questions: what happened, does it cross a threshold, and how long have you got to report it. Here is how the duty works for a commercial kitchen.
Reporting duties · RIDDOR
A chef has been off the line for eight days, wheezing every time the extraction canopy roars into life, and the kitchen manager is holding a scrap of paper with a doctor's note on it - wondering, quietly, whether this is now something the law expects them to tell someone about.
It is a familiar scene. Nobody set out to break a rule. The injury or the illness crept up, the paperwork felt like a grey area, and the clock was ticking without anyone realising it had started. RIDDOR - the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 2013 - is the framework that turns that uncertainty into a clear set of questions: what happened, does it cross a threshold, and how long have you got. Get those three right and the reporting itself is a short online form. Get them wrong, or ignore them, and you are exposed to enforcement on top of whatever harm already occurred.
For a commercial kitchen, the RIDDOR conversation and the ventilation conversation are rarely far apart. The same greasy air that clogs a duct is the air your team breathes shift after shift, and the local exhaust ventilation over the range is the thing standing between them and a reportable disease. So it is worth knowing, in plain terms, what RIDDOR asks of you and when.
RIDDOR does not ask you to report every cut finger or every bad day. It draws lines, and the duty only bites once an incident crosses one of them. The regulations place the responsibility on a defined "responsible person" - usually the employer, the self-employed individual, or whoever is in control of the premises where the work happens. If that is you, these are the categories that matter.
There are five broad buckets. Deaths at work. Specified injuries - the serious list in Schedule 1 that replaced the old "major injury" wording, covering things like fractures other than to fingers, thumbs and toes, amputations, serious burns, and any injury leading to loss of consciousness from head injury or asphyxia. Over-seven-day injuries, where a worker cannot do their normal duties for more than seven consecutive days. Injuries to members of the public or other non-workers who are taken directly to hospital for treatment. And dangerous occurrences - the defined near-misses, such as the collapse or overturning of lifting equipment, that could have caused serious harm even though, this time, they did not.
Worth flagging: an over-three-day injury is not reportable, but it must still be recorded in your accident book. Recording and reporting are two different duties, and RIDDOR expects you to keep records of every reportable incident for at least three years.
The category kitchens most often overlook is disease. Under Regulation 8, certain diagnosed conditions are reportable when the person's work involved significant or regular exposure to a known cause. The list includes occupational asthma, occupational dermatitis, hand-arm vibration syndrome, carpal tunnel syndrome and tendonitis. For a kitchen, occupational asthma and dermatitis are the live risks - asthma where staff are regularly exposed to respiratory sensitisers such as flour dust or cleaning chemical fumes, and dermatitis where skin meets irritant or sensitising agents shift after shift. The trigger is not the first cough or the first patch of raw skin; it is a written diagnosis from a doctor linking the condition to that workplace exposure. If a member of the public reports feeling unwell after eating with you, that is a different investigation entirely, and it is worth handling a customer illness report properly so you can tell a food-safety concern apart from a RIDDOR-reportable one.
Knowing what to report is only half of it. RIDDOR is built around deadlines, and the ones that catch people out are the ones that start earlier than they expect. The single most useful habit is to note the date of the accident the moment it happens, because several of the clocks run from that date rather than from the day you realised a report was due.
Deaths, specified injuries, dangerous occurrences and non-worker hospitalisations must be notified to the HSE without delay - by phone, on 0345 300 9923, for fatalities and specified injuries - with the full report submitted within ten days. Over-seven-day injuries have their own timeline: you have fifteen days from the date of the accident to file, not fifteen days from the moment the seven-day threshold was crossed. So if someone is hurt on the first of the month and is still off on the ninth, the eighth day, the report is due by the sixteenth. Reportable diseases run from the written diagnosis - the duty arises when the doctor's confirmation lands, so keep that note and act on it rather than filing it away.
The mechanics are straightforward. HSE moved away from routine paper submission years ago, and the downloadable F2508 PDFs floating around third-party sites are not accepted for standard reports. The online forms at notifications.hse.gov.uk are the only valid written route, and there is a separate form for each type of incident. Fill in the responsible person's details, the injured party, what happened and where, and submit - it takes minutes once you know which category applies.
The better outcome, of course, is never having to file at all. Most kitchen-related occupational disease reports trace back to airborne or contact exposure that better controls would have prevented, and your extraction system is central to that. Local exhaust ventilation under the canopy pulls grease-laden vapour, smoke and cooking fumes away from your team before they breathe it in. Under COSHH, that LEV must be thoroughly examined and tested at least every fourteen months, and the test tells you whether it is still capturing at the design airflow or quietly underperforming behind a film of grease. A canopy that no longer extracts properly is not just a fire and hygiene problem - it is an exposure that, over time, can become a reportable case of occupational asthma. Keeping the ductwork clean and the LEV tested is, in the plainest sense, how you keep the reporting form in the drawer.
Questions
It depends on the category. Deaths and specified injuries must be notified to the HSE without delay by phone, with the full report submitted within ten days. Dangerous occurrences and non-worker hospitalisations are also reported within ten days. Over-seven-day injuries have fifteen days, timed from the date of the accident rather than from the day the seven-day threshold was crossed, and reportable diseases are reported once you receive the written diagnosis.
Yes, where a worker has significant or regular exposure to a known respiratory sensitiser - such as flour dust or cleaning chemical fumes - and a doctor has given a written diagnosis linking the asthma to that work. The duty starts on the written diagnosis, not the first symptom. Keeping extraction well maintained and LEV tested is the practical way to control the exposure that leads to these cases in the first place.
Phoenix Duct Clean · by the numbers
Phoenix examines and tests local exhaust ventilation to HSG258 and COSHH - measured, reported and certificated, UK-wide.