How long does one need to keep incident reports? Not the Notifiable Incidents, but the minor injuries, near misses, etc.
We have a register listing all the incidents, which will be kept indefinitely, but what about the filled in incident forms?
I don't believe there is a legally required time-frame for keeping non-notifiable incident records. I would consider how long they are useful for your business first and foremost.
Not that we want to, but ours get kept for ever. That's because it all gets scanned / electronically recorded against an employee. And once done I can't be bothered deleting. One day some Privacy Act botherer will knock on my door and remind me I can only keep personal information for as long as I have a purpose for holding it.
In terms of actual time frames you probably have:
1 year - to cover the time an employee has to lodge an ACC claim.
3 months if a person wants to bring a safety related personal grievance.
7 years if it relates to a taxable payment to an employe.
12 months for the purposes of the Worksafe prosecution limitation period
2 years in relation to a private prosecution
5 years, if as a PCBU you have a notifiable event
At the Central Districts Field Days Work Safe said I only needed to keep notifiable incident information. But Andrews list in the comments above seems really helpful