Accidents and Investigations Services in Ealing

HSG245 is the HSE's guidance document on investigating accidents and incidents at work, setting out a structured methodology for identifying immediate causes, underlying causes, and root causes. Following HSG245 ensures that investigations are thorough, consistent, and defensible if findings are later scrutinised by an enforcement authority, insurer, or court.

An immediate cause is the direct action or condition that led to the incident, such as a worker slipping on a wet floor. A root cause is the deeper management or system failure that allowed the hazard to exist in the first place, such as the absence of a cleaning procedure or a failure to act on a previous near miss report.

A witness statement is a written account from someone who saw or was involved in an incident, recorded as close to the event as possible while details are still fresh. Statements should be taken individually rather than in groups to avoid accounts being influenced by others, and they should be signed and dated by the witness to confirm accuracy.

RIDDOR requires employers to report deaths, specified injuries, incidents resulting in a worker being incapacitated for more than seven consecutive days, and certain dangerous occurrences or occupational diseases. In Ealing's diverse commercial and light industrial sector, the types of reportable incidents vary by workplace, and failure to report a qualifying event is itself a criminal offence.

A contributory factor is a condition or circumstance that did not directly cause an incident but made it more likely to occur or more severe in outcome, such as fatigue, time pressure, or inadequate supervision. Identifying contributory factors allows a business to address the management conditions that create the environment for accidents, rather than simply fixing the immediate physical hazard.

A timeline reconstruction maps the sequence of events leading up to, during, and immediately after an incident, drawing on physical evidence, witness accounts, CCTV footage, and documentary records. It helps investigators identify the precise point at which things went wrong and is particularly valuable in complex incidents involving multiple people, locations, or systems.

A duty holder must cooperate with any investigation, preserve evidence, secure the scene where safe to do so, and make relevant documentation and personnel available to investigators. Interfering with evidence or failing to cooperate with an HSE investigation can result in additional enforcement action beyond any penalty arising from the underlying incident itself.

An accident investigation focuses on understanding system and management failures in order to prevent recurrence, not on attributing personal blame to individual workers. Running a disciplinary process alongside or before a proper safety investigation risks distorting witness accounts and discouraging honest reporting, which undermines the quality of findings and can damage safety culture across an organisation.

Physical evidence that should be secured immediately includes the tools or equipment involved, CCTV and access control records, maintenance logs, training records, and any personal protective equipment worn at the time. In Ealing's busy commercial and light industrial environment, where scenes can quickly be disturbed by ongoing operations or emergency response activities, acting fast to preserve evidence is critical to the integrity of any subsequent investigation.

A corrective action plan sets out the specific steps a business will take in response to investigation findings, with a named person responsible for each action and a target completion date. Without a formal plan, investigation recommendations are often acknowledged but not acted upon, meaning the same underlying conditions remain in place and similar incidents continue to occur.

Investigation reports can potentially be disclosed in legal proceedings, which is why they must be factually accurate, objective, and free from speculation or admissions of liability that go beyond what the evidence supports. Working with an experienced external investigator helps ensure that reports are professionally structured and focused on facts and system failures rather than language that could be misinterpreted in a legal context.

Causal factor analysis is a structured technique used to identify all the factors that contributed to an incident, rather than stopping at the most obvious explanation. It involves building a cause-and-effect diagram or fault tree that maps the relationship between individual failures and the final outcome, producing a much richer understanding of what went wrong and therefore a more effective set of preventive actions.