Claims: the evidence that decides them, and when it has to exist

Every regime described here, on both sides of the Atlantic, requires an employer to record that something happened. None of them requires anyone to record what it looked like. That gap is the subject of this glossary, and it is where most defended claims are won or lost long before a solicitor is involved.

Why is a claim decided by evidence nobody was required to create?

Because the question a claim asks is narrower than the question a regulation asks.

Regulations are written about systems. They require an employer to assess risk, to inspect equipment, to train people, to keep a record when someone is hurt. All of those describe the general: what the organisation does, in the ordinary course, across every shift and every site.

Liability turns on the particular. Not whether the floor was inspected on a schedule, but whether it was wet at 14:20 on a Tuesday when a named person walked across it. Not whether the machine was examined within its interval, but whether the guard was in position on the day.

The general record is created by obligation and survives by retention rule. The particular record is created by somebody deciding, in the moment, to take a photograph nobody asked them for. That is the whole asymmetry, and every page in this glossary is a consequence of it.

What do the UK rules actually require?

Reporting and record-keeping, not evidence gathering.

Under RIDDOR 2013, certain injuries must be reported to the regulator and the record kept for at least three years. Under regulation 25 of the Social Security (Claims and Payments) Regulations 1979, employers with ten or more employees must keep an accident book. Both produce a written account of the event.

Neither requires a photograph. Neither requires the name of a bystander who was not an employee. Neither requires anyone to note the lighting, the floor covering, or where the barrier actually was as opposed to where the drawing says it should be.

Worse, the safe response often destroys the proof. An employer who clears the spill, refits the guard and reopens the aisle has done exactly the right thing and has removed the only evidence of what the place looked like when somebody was hurt in it.

We cover the two UK records in RIDDOR explained and the accident book as claim evidence.

What do the US rules actually require?

The same shape, with more paperwork and the same silence about the scene.

Under 29 CFR Part 1904, covered employers record each recordable case on the OSHA 300 Log and the 301 Incident Report within seven calendar days, post an annual summary and keep the records for five years. Separately, workers’ compensation law in each state requires a first report of injury to open the claim, on its own deadline.

That is a heavier recording burden than the UK carries, and it is no more useful for proving what happened. The 301 captures the case. It does not capture the conditions.

Those duties are covered in OSHA 300, 300A and 301, recordable or reportable and the first report of injury form.

What survives, and what has already gone?

Written records held to a retention period survive. Anything describing the scene does not.

Three years of RIDDOR records, five years of OSHA logs, a live risk assessment, training certificates, maintenance contracts, payroll: all of these are still there when a claim arrives late. They prove what the system said should happen.

Closed circuit television overwrites itself on a cycle measured in weeks, without anyone deciding to delete it, and data protection law prescribes no retention period for it either way (ico.org.uk). Agency workers and subcontractors disperse. Memory keeps the event and loses the detail.

How long does each record actually last?

The retention periods are scattered across half a dozen instruments, and they do not line up with each other or with the time limits for bringing a claim. Consolidated:

Two things follow from reading that list together.

The first is that the shortest retention period in the chain is the one that governs. It does not matter that an accident book entry survives three years if the footage showing what actually happened was overwritten in three weeks.

The second is that compliance and usefulness are different things. The PUWER line is the clearest example. Regulation 6(3) of PUWER 1998 requires an inspection result to be kept only until the next inspection is recorded, so an employer who keeps the current record and nothing else has complied exactly, and has thrown away the record covering the day in dispute.

How do those periods compare with the time limit for bringing a claim?

Badly, and that is the structural problem.

In England and Wales, section 11 of the Limitation Act 1980 sets a three year period for personal injury actions, running from the later of the date the cause of action accrued and the claimant’s date of knowledge. Where the injured person was a child, section 28 means time does not begin until they turn eighteen. In the United States, limitation is a matter of state law and varies, and workers’ compensation systems run separate notice clocks of their own.

So a claim can arrive lawfully, well inside the period, at a point where several of the records above have lawfully ceased to exist. Nothing has gone wrong. The two sets of rules were simply written for different purposes and never reconciled.

We describe what those regimes require. Whether any limitation period applies to a particular claim is a question for that claim’s own advisers, and nothing here is advice on it.

How much does delay actually change?

It changes which side of the file is intact.

A claim notified two years on arrives when the general record is complete and the particular record has gone. The defendant can prove the policy, the training and the inspection regime, and cannot prove the one fact in dispute.

Delay is also asymmetric. A claimant knows who they are and stays available to their own solicitor throughout. A defendant’s witnesses move on, and the ones most likely to have seen the accident, agency and subcontract workers, are the ones least likely to be traceable a year later.

Set out in full in what survives a late-reported claim.

What does a defendant actually need in the file?

More than the regime requires, and most of it has to be created within hours.

The accident record. Photographs of the scene before it is cleared. The names and contact details of everyone present, not only employees. Any footage, preserved deliberately rather than left to the overwrite cycle. The inspection and maintenance history for the equipment involved. Training records for the person and their supervisor. The risk assessment that covered the task.

Each item proves a different thing, and each has a different shelf life. That list, with what each item does and how long it lasts, is what evidence defends a workplace injury claim.

What happens once a claim is notified?

The clocks start, and none of them creates evidence.

In England and Wales the pre-action protocols set out who must respond, and how quickly. They assume the documents already exist, because there is no mechanism in any of them for producing a photograph of a floor two years after it was mopped. See pre-action protocol deadlines.

At the front end of any claim sits the first notification, the moment the insurer learns there is a claim at all. What is captured there sets what the rest of the file can be. See FNOL across the UK and US.

Who are the people handling this?

Rarely the insurer directly.

A loss adjuster investigates on the insurer’s instruction. A loss assessor does the same work for the policyholder. The difference is who appoints and who pays, and that difference also decides which of them is regulated. See loss adjuster or loss assessor.

A third party administrator handles the file on behalf of an insurer or a self-insured employer without carrying the risk itself, and the model differs between the UK and the US. See what a third party administrator does.

Where to start

If you are new to this, read FNOL, then what evidence defends a workplace injury claim, then what survives a late-reported claim. Those three carry the argument.

United Kingdom. The accident book as claim evidence and pre-action protocol deadlines, with RIDDOR explained alongside them.

United States. The first report of injury form, OSHA 300, 300A and 301 and recordable or reportable.

Who handles the claim. Loss adjuster or loss assessor and what a third party administrator does.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• RIDDOR 2013, regulation 12, record retention: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2013/1471/regulation/12/made
• Social Security (Claims and Payments) Regulations 1979, regulation 25: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1979/628/regulation/25
• PUWER 1998, regulation 6, inspection records: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1998/2306/regulation/6/made
• ICO, guidance on video surveillance: https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/uk-gdpr-guidance-and-resources/cctv-and-video-surveillance/guidance-on-video-surveillance-including-cctv/
• 29 CFR Part 1904, OSHA recording and reporting: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-29/part-1904

Last reviewed: 16 September 2026

About Logincident. We build digital reporting and data visualisation software that captures structured evidence at the point an incident happens and routes it to the people who need it. We are not a law firm or a claims handler, and nothing on this page is legal advice.