These data are gathered to understand the prevalence and types of injuries in development-led archaeology, excluding those archaeologists providing advice to local planning authorities. The data were first gathered in 2018-19 as part of a FAME health and safety survey. In 2020, that survey was combined with the 2019-20 Profiling the Profession survey. This was to avoid overloading the sector with too many surveys, resulting in fewer responses because of survey fatigue.
Conditional answering was used, which meant only those working in development-led archaeology in consultation or contractor roles were asked the health and safety questions. A total 92 responses were received from organisations employing 2,386 full-time equivalent (FTE) positions (37.5 hours per week, 52 weeks per year). This represents 55% of the estimated 4,375 FTE archaeologists working in this area. We make the assumption that the rates for this sample are reflective of the whole sector. Given that it consists of 55% of the sub-sector, that is a safe assumption.
Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 2013 (RIDDOR)
RIDDOR is the legal instrument that requires employers, and those in charge of work premises, to report and keep records of:
- work-related accidents which cause deaths
- work-related accidents which cause certain serious injuries (reportable injuries)
- diagnosed cases of certain industrial diseases; and
- certain ‘dangerous occurrences’ (incidents with the potential to cause harm)
In 2010 FAME conducted a similar health and safety survey but RIDDOR was updated in 2013. The changes in 2013 means that the 2009-10 data are mostly no longer comparable.
Types of RIDDOR Reportable Incidents
If someone has died or has been injured because of a work-related accident this may have to be reported. Not all accidents need to be reported, other than for certain gas incidents, a RIDDOR report is required only when:
- the accident is work-related
- it results in an injury of a type which is reportable
Work-related
RIDDOR only requires the reporting of accidents if they happen ‘out of or in connection with work’. The fact that there is an accident at work premises does not, in itself, mean that the accident is work-related – the work activity itself must contribute to the accident. An accident is ‘work-related’ if any of the following played a significant role:
- the way the work was carried out
- any machinery, plant, substances or equipment used for the work or
- the condition of the site or premises where the accident happened
Types of reportable injury
The Health and Safety Executive has a full list here: https://www.hse.gov.uk/riddor/reportable-incidents.htm
‘Other’ Non-reportable incidents
While the respondents were asked for ‘more information’, it was not clear this was referring to the ‘other’ category and most commented ‘We didn’t have any’ instead. Future iterations of this survey will make it clear the final free text answer is to explain those answers.
Injury Frequency Rate and Incident Rate
There are two primary injury figures: Incident Rate or Frequency Rate (for more information see http://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/adhoc-analysis/injury-frequency-rates.pdf) . The Injury Frequency Rate indicates the number of Reportable Injuries employees are likely to have for every 1,000,000 hours worked. It is calculated in the following manner:
(Number of Reportable Injuries in the period / Total hours worked (by all employees) during the period) x 1,000,000
While the Incident Rate is the number of injuries per 100,000 employees and is calculated in this manner:
(Injuries (per year) / employed) x 100,000
Compared to other sectors
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) provides data for Incident Rates for different sectors by Standard Industrial Classification codes (SIC 2007). The Health and Safety Executive only reports data using the Incident Rate and does not report on Frequency Rates. However, they do provide a methodology for generating the Frequency Rates for sectors. This is done by using the average hours worked to provided estimates:
Incidence Rate * 10 / (average Hours per week * Weeks per Year)
HSE does not produce these ‘hours worked’ data, but the Office for National Statistics (ONS) does. There are two main sources of data on hours of work:
- the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) survey https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/datasets/industry4digitsic2007ashetable16
- the Labour Force Survey (LFS) https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/datasets/averagehoursworkedbyindustryhour03
LFS only holds data on large, top-level, sectors while the ASHE data is broken down into significantly smaller categories with makes it easier to compare archaeology with other professions, so ASHE was used. We downloaded the data from ONS and combined the ASHE data with the Incidence Rate data provided by HSE (https://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/tables/ridind.xlsx) to produce the Calculated Injury Frequency Rate.