Quick Answer
An incident report form is the written record you make every time something goes wrong on a job, whether a worker is hurt, a member of the public is hurt, equipment fails, or a near miss happens. The HSE requires UK employers and self-employed tradespeople to record specific work-related incidents and report serious ones under RIDDOR. Download the free Word and PDF templates below. Both are structured around the HSE F2508 fields plus a near-miss section, and they include a worked example so you can see how to fill one in properly the first time.
Table of Contents
- Download the free template
- Why proper incident records matter
- What is inside the template
- RIDDOR rules: what to report, when
- How to fill one in, step by step
- Why near misses are worth the paperwork
- Using AI to spot hazards from site photos
- Common mistakes we see
- What other trades are saying
- Training videos on RIDDOR and near misses
- Frequently asked questions
Google Docs
Microsoft Word
Claude AIDownload the free template
The template comes as a Word document and a PDF. The Word version is for typing into on a laptop, tablet, or phone. The PDF version is for printing and filling in by hand on a clipboard. Most tradespeople we work with keep printed copies in the van for the moment something happens, then type the details up later the same day.
Two download options. Same form, different formats.
The TrainAR Incident Report Form opens in any browser. The Word version saves to your Google Drive, OneDrive, or local machine and you can edit it directly. The PDF prints on standard A4 paper, single-sided. Both versions include a worked example using a fictional ladder fall on a domestic job, so you can see how the boxes are meant to be filled in before you start your own. Section headings match the official HSE form, so your records line up with what the inspector expects to see.
If you want to know which records also need a formal RIDDOR submission to HSE, the rules section further down covers that. For other compliance paperwork you should have ready alongside this one, look at the CP12 gas safety certificate template and the job report form template.
Why proper incident records matter
Three reasons. None of them are about ticking boxes.
Reason one is legal. Under the Social Security (Claims and Payments) Regulations 1979, any employer with ten or more workers must keep an accident book. RIDDOR 2013 then layers on a duty to report serious incidents to HSE within fixed deadlines: 10 days for specified injuries and dangerous occurrences, 15 days for over-7-day worker absences. Self-employed tradespeople have the same duty when working on someone else's premises. The fines and prosecutions for not reporting are real. So is the prison time at the upper end.
Reason two is insurance. The first thing a public liability insurer asks for after a claim is the incident record. No record, no defence. The hours between an accident and the claim letter arriving on your desk can be six months, twelve months, three years. By then you cannot remember what happened. The form is your memory.
Reason three is operational. If you do not record near misses, you cannot see the patterns. The same ladder slips three times before someone breaks an ankle. The same client's stairs catch out two different engineers. Patterns only show up in writing. They do not show up in conversation.
What is inside the template
The template is a single form. Six numbered sections plus a near-miss section at the end. You fill in the parts that apply and put N/A in the parts that do not.
Section 1: About your organisation. Your business name, address, phone number, the name of the person completing the form, and your relationship to the injured person (employer, principal contractor, occupier, householder).
Section 2: About the incident. Date, time, exact location, what the injured person was doing at the time, the agent of the accident (the ladder, the saw, the vehicle), and a short narrative of what happened.
Section 3: About the injured person. Full name, home address, postcode, phone number, date of birth, job title, employment status (employee, subcontractor, work experience, member of the public, self-employed), and whether they were doing their normal work.
Section 4: About the injury. Part of body injured, type of injury (fracture, laceration, bruise, burn, sprain), level of severity, whether they went to hospital, and whether they were absent from work for more than seven days.
Section 5: About the kind of accident. The HSE uses a fixed list of categories. Fall from height. Slip, trip or fall on same level. Struck by moving vehicle. Struck by falling object. Trapped by something collapsing. Exposed to electricity. The template lists all 16 categories so you can tick the right one.
Section 6: Describing what happened. A free-text narrative, ideally written within 24 hours of the incident. Three paragraphs is usually enough. What were you doing, what went wrong, what happened next.
Near-miss section. Same structure but covers events where nobody got hurt. The HSE Near-Miss Book sits alongside the BI 510 Accident Book in their official publications list because near-miss data is just as valuable. The template treats both with the same care.
RIDDOR rules: what to report, when
The two systems get muddled. Recording an incident is one thing. Reporting it under RIDDOR is another. Every reportable incident must be recorded, but most recorded incidents are not reportable.
Here is the practical breakdown of what triggers a RIDDOR report to HSE.
| Category | Reportable | Deadline |
|---|---|---|
| Work-related death | Yes, always | Without delay (also phone 0345 300 9923) |
| Specified injury (fracture other than to fingers, thumbs or toes; amputation; permanent sight loss; crush injury; serious burn; scalping; unconscious from head injury or asphyxia) | Yes | 10 days |
| Hospital treatment for member of the public | Yes | 10 days |
| Worker off normal duties for more than 7 consecutive days | Yes | 15 days |
| Occupational disease (specific list, includes carpal tunnel syndrome, hand-arm vibration syndrome, occupational dermatitis, occupational asthma, occupational cancer, tendonitis) | Yes | Without delay on diagnosis |
| Dangerous occurrence (specified list of near-miss events, e.g. scaffold collapse, lift failure, gas leak into building) | Yes | 10 days |
| Cuts, bruises, minor burns | No (but still record) | N/A |
| Worker off normal duties for 3 to 7 days | No (but still record) | N/A |
| Near miss with no harm done | No (but still record) | N/A |
Reports go online at hse.gov.uk/riddor/reporting. Fatal accidents and specified injuries also accept phone reports on 0345 300 9923 during office hours. Most other reports must go through the online form.
How to fill one in, step by step
The whole point is to get the facts down while they are fresh. Memory shifts within hours. Witnesses leave the site. Photos disappear off phones. Stick to this sequence and you will have a record that holds up.
Step 1. Deal with the injured person first. First aid. Ambulance if needed. Make them comfortable. Nothing about paperwork matters until that is done.
Step 2. Secure the scene. Stop work in the immediate area. Take photos from multiple angles before anything moves. Photograph the position of the injured person if it is safe to do so, the equipment involved, the surroundings, any defects or hazards you can see. Six to ten photos minimum. Bad lighting is fine. Smartphone quality is fine.
Step 3. Collect witness names and contact details. Anyone who saw what happened. Write them on the back of the form or take them straight into a note on your phone. Their formal statements come later.
Step 4. Fill in Sections 1, 2, and 3 within four hours. Your organisation, the incident, the injured person. These are mostly facts you already know. Get them down quickly while you still remember the exact time and the exact position.
Step 5. Fill in Sections 4, 5, and 6 within 24 hours. The injury detail, the kind of accident, the narrative. Use the photos and the witness notes to help. Three paragraphs of plain English in Section 6. What you were doing. What went wrong. What happened next.
Step 6. Decide on RIDDOR. Walk through the table above. If a category applies, file the online RIDDOR report within the deadline. If none apply, keep the form filed but do not submit it to HSE.
Step 7. File the form and keep it. Scan to PDF if you used the paper version. Keep a digital copy and a physical copy for at least seven years. Indefinitely if anyone under 18 was involved.
Why near misses are worth the paperwork
The HSE accident triangle, published in their Near-Miss Book guidance, shows the ratio. For every serious injury, there are roughly 30 minor injuries and 300 near misses. The near misses are the early warning. They are also the cheapest data point you can collect.
The classic example is a tile slipping off a roof. Nobody hurt. No damage. You sweep it up and carry on. Three weeks later the same kind of tile slips and lands on a passing van. Now there is property damage. Three months later it lands on a customer's child. Now it is a hospital trip, a RIDDOR report, and an insurance claim.
If the first slip had been written down, even on a half-page near-miss form, the pattern would have been spotted in week two. The recording is the discipline. The pattern matters.
Using AI to spot hazards from site photos
The hardest part of any incident report is hindsight. You write the narrative knowing what happened. The hazard was obvious in retrospect. The question for prevention is whether you would have spotted it before. AI tools are getting good at this.
Drop a set of site photos into Claude 4.7 or GPT-5.1. Ask the model to list visible hazards. You get a structured list back: trip hazards, working-at-height issues, missing PPE, exposed wiring, blocked fire exits, untidy work areas. Some of it will be obvious. Some of it will be wrong (AI does not know your particular trade well enough to judge every detail). A useful percentage will be things you did not consciously notice.
The point is not to replace the trained eye. It is to add a second pair of eyes that has read every safety bulletin ever published. The model will not feel awkward pointing out the obvious. It does not have an off day. It does not get tired at 4pm.
"You are a UK construction site safety officer. I am sharing photos of a job site. List every visible hazard you can see, grouped into: working at height, slips and trips, manual handling, electricity, fire, machinery, PPE gaps, and housekeeping. For each, name the exact item in the photo and suggest a brief control measure. Be specific. Do not invent hazards that are not in the photos."
This works retrospectively too. If you are filling in an incident report, share the scene photos with the model and ask for a hazard analysis. Compare against what you saw and wrote down. Gaps in your analysis become training points for next time. For a wider AI safety workflow, see our AI workflow guide.
Common mistakes we see
We have looked at incident records from dozens of trades businesses over the years. The same handful of mistakes turn up every time.
1. Writing the report days later from memory. The narrative drifts. Detail gets lost. The form is most useful when it is filled in within 24 hours.
2. Vague injury descriptions. "Hurt his back" is not enough. "Lumbar strain, level 4 on the pain scale, mobility limited, A&E discharged with naproxen and ten days off" is the standard. The detail matters for medical follow-up and any future claim.
3. Not recording near misses. The single most common gap. Most businesses only fill the form in when someone is actually hurt. The near misses are where the prevention happens.
4. Filing under the wrong job. If you use job management software, the form needs to attach to the specific job where the incident happened. Filing it under "admin" or in a separate folder makes it impossible to find later.
5. Forgetting RIDDOR for sub-contractors. If a subbie is hurt on a job you are running, the responsibility for RIDDOR usually falls on you as the principal contractor, not on them as a self-employed worker. Check the chain.
6. Throwing the form away after a year. Civil claims can land three years out. Industrial disease claims can land decades later. Seven years is the practical minimum. Indefinite for incidents involving children or chronic exposures.
What other trades are saying
Training videos on RIDDOR and near misses
RIDDOR Health and Safety: CORRECT Steps to RIDDOR Reporting
Safeti
RIDDOR Reporting in 60 Seconds
Safeti
Near Miss Training: Examples of Near Misses
SheelTalks
Why Reporting Near Misses at Work is Crucial
Safety Smart HQ
Near Miss Reporting For A Safer Workplace
Moxie Training
Construction Safety Training Video: Over 40 Topics
Resonate Pictures
Frequently asked questions
If you have ten or more employees, yes. The accident book entry covers it for minor injuries, and that is all the law requires for cuts and bruises. The full incident report form is for anything more serious, anything that puts someone off work, anything that involved a member of the public, or anything you would want a record of later. As a self-employed sole trader, you can be lighter on the minor stuff, but you still have RIDDOR duties for the major incidents.
The BI 510 is the official accident book. It is a tear-out pad with one entry per incident and a sealed-envelope GDPR protection on the personal details. Our incident report form is the longer-form equivalent for incidents that need full RIDDOR-style detail. Most trades businesses use both: the BI 510 for the quick record at the time, then the full report form for the formal write-up.
Write it down now from memory. Note clearly at the top of the form when it actually happened and when you wrote it up. A late record is better than no record. If the incident was RIDDOR-reportable, file the RIDDOR report now too, even if you are past the 10 or 15 day deadline. HSE prefer a late report to no report. The fine for non-reporting is much bigger than the fine for late reporting.
The person completing it signs it. The injured person should sign to confirm the facts if they are well enough. A witness should sign Section 6 if there was one. Do not ask the injured person to sign anything that admits or denies liability. The form is a factual record, not a settlement document.
Yes. The form contains personal data: names, addresses, health information. Keep it secure. Locked filing cabinet if paper, encrypted folder if digital. Only authorised people get access. The HSE BI 510 accident book has a sealed flap precisely so other workers cannot read the details. Apply the same standard to your form.
Yes. The HSE online form at hse.gov.uk/riddor works on mobile browsers. It takes about 20 minutes to complete properly. You can save and come back to it if you need to gather information mid-way. Have the incident report form open in another tab so you can copy details across.
HSE receive it, log it, and decide whether to investigate. Most reports do not trigger an investigation, especially the over-7-day injury reports. Fatal accidents are visited within a few days. Specified injuries and dangerous occurrences are often visited within seven working days if HSE judge the case warrants it. You will get a reference number for your records either way.
Key takeaways
- Every UK employer with ten or more workers must keep an accident book. Self-employed tradespeople have RIDDOR duties whenever someone else is hurt on their job.
- Use the template within 24 hours of any incident. Memory drifts fast, and the form is your only defence if a claim arrives later.
- Record near misses with the same care as injuries. They are the early warning. Patterns only show up in writing.
- Walk through the RIDDOR table to decide if a report to HSE is needed. Most incident records do not require a RIDDOR submission. The ones that do have hard deadlines: 10 days for specified injuries, 15 days for over-7-day worker absences.
- Keep records for at least seven years. Indefinitely if anyone under 18 was involved or if there is any risk of chronic disease (HAVS, dermatitis, asthma) claims years later.
