Association of Colleges

Accidents in Colleges

According to the HSE, the term “accident” includes any undesired circumstances which may or may not give rise to ill-health or injury, damage to property, plant, products or the environment, production losses or increased liabilities. Incident includes any undesired circumstances and 'near-misses' which could cause accidents.

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Accident Statistics 2009 - 2010

A big thank you to those colleges that have already taken part in this data collection. Although the number of Colleges submitting data continues to be relatively small, the ability to make comparisons, for example with similar Colleges, was found by members to be valuable. If you missed out last year then here is the message again:

We all agree, I am sure, on the importance of benchmarking. HSE has described the advantages in their document “Health & Safety Benchmarking (Improving Together)”.
One thing that has been missing, from the FE sector, is nationwide accident data. We have been hoping to have such data available for benchmarking purposes, to study trends over time, to identify accident “hotspots” etc. The first step in this process is to collect basic summary figures.

The information I require from each College, for the Aug 2009 - July 2010 period, is:

College Name (This will NOT be published to preserve confidentiality)
College Type (General FE, Sixth Form, Specialist (state type, eg land-based))

For Staff:
Number of Staff (Full Time Equivalent)
Number of Incidents/Accidents
Number of RIDDOR Reportables

For Learners:
Number of Learners (Standard Learner Number)
Number of Incidents/Accidents
Number of RIDDOR Reportables

Thanks for your co-operation.

Action needed:
Please e-mail your College's data (just the six numbers listed above) to Stephen Green 
There is no closing date for your submission, the chart is amended as new figures are returned.

 

Latest data

The summary of 2009-2010 will change as more data are returned. The latest version is available here:
Accident Statistics 2009-10
Blank lines on the chart relate to Colleges that have been given a College Number (having returned figures for previous years) but have not yet submitted 2009-2010 figures.

Data from past years' returns are on Excel files, here

Accident Statistics 2008-9
Accident statistics 2007-8
Accident statistics 2006-7
Accident statistics 2005-6
Accident statistics 2004-5

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Costs of Accidents

Health and Safety management should be seen, by a College, as a quality issue. Failing to manage H&S effectively is likely to lead to undesirable outcomes in three areas – financial, moral and legal.

Financial loss includes money lost, for example, as a result of repairs to property, machinery and equipment. More importantly, an accident resulting in injury to a person may lead to losses due to sickness costs, training costs, pension costs, legal costs and costs associated with the temporary or permanent replacement of those injured. There would also be the possible effects on funding for a College which did not safeguard the health, safety and welfare of learners.

Moral factors include, principally, our desire to avoid any human suffering. A College should not forget the negative effect on its reputation as a result of the publicity following a serious accident.

Possible civil and criminal action could be fines and compensation claims which may dwarf any fine imposed.

Most of these costs cannot be insured against. In fact, it has been demonstrated that uninsured costs such as equipment and property damage, loss of experience/expertise and legal costs, can vary between 8-36 times that of the insured cost.

It is clear, then, that in addition to the moral case it makes sound financial sense for Colleges to work towards reducing accidents to a minimum. HSE have published a useful ready reckoner for accident costs. A summary of  together with a link to its on-line version is accessible by clicking below.

HSE accident cost ready reckoner 
 

College managers should recognise the need to investigate the cause of an accident which has caused serious injury. However, it is wrong merely to consider the seriousness of an accident in relation to its outcome. For example, if a member of staff slips on some spilled liquid, the consequences may range from soiled clothing to fatal injury. The precise outcome of an accident cannot be readily predicted. The only effective way to reduce injuries is to investigate all accidents and take the necessary measures to eliminate their causes.

Not all accidents need to be investigated to the same extent or depth. The greatest effort should concentrate on significant events where there has been serious injury, ill-health or loss, as well as those which had the potential to cause serious injury or loss.

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Reporting Accidents

Certain accidents and occurrences MUST be reported under The Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regs: 1985 (RIDDOR). These Regulations can be difficult to interpret in a College context, where many College users are non-employees. 

AoC has written some guidance on reporting College accidents -    Accident reporting under RIDDOR regulations.

Of course, there are additional requirements for reporting accidents to learners funded by SFA. Information on this is available on the Safelearner website.

Recording Accidents

AoC H&S Briefing 14/07 introduced version 2 of AIMS, a system for recording all College accidents and incidents. The background to AIMS is detailed at    Backgound to Accident and Incident Management System (AIMS) for FE Colleges

The AIMS v2 software is a Microsoft Access file, available for download at aims_v2zip

In order to make it a manageable download it has been compressed into a zip file. Choose the option to save the file (aims_v2.zip) to your computer. Once saved it will need to be unzipped and the extracted file (AIMS2 Master File - Blank.mdb) saved or copied to your computer before use.

Please note that some users have reported problems between AIMS and MS Office 2007. If your College software is being updated to Office 2007 then it would be advisable to run AIMS on a stand-alone PC that has Office 2003.

The revised Basic User Guide contains information on how to produce graphical output for your reports.

It can be downloaded:
single-sided printing at    AIMS V.2 Basic User Guide for single-sided printing
and for double-sided printing   AIMS V.2 Basic User Guide for double-sided printing

Tip: the B.U.G. is formatted to be printed out, then folded to make an A5 booklet. 

(The full user manual was written for the previous version of AIMS but expert users may find its contents useful. It can be downloaded at    AIMS Version 1 manual)