What Is a Notifiable Incident and When Must You Report It to WorkSafe?

What is a notifiable incident?

A notifiable incident is a workplace death, an injury needing immediate medical treatment, or an event that exposes someone to serious risk. In Victoria, the employer must phone WorkSafe on 13 23 60 immediately, preserve the site, provide written notice within 48 hours, and keep that record for at least five years.

I have stood in enough smoko rooms at 6am the morning after a bad shift to know the hardest part isn't the paperwork. It's the ten minutes where nobody is sure whether this one has to be called in. This article removes that doubt.

Which incidents must be notified to WorkSafe Victoria?

Under the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 (Vic), WorkSafe must be notified of two categories of incident at a workplace under your management and control (WorkSafe Victoria, reviewed 1 December 2025).

1. Death, or an injury requiring medical treatment

Notify WorkSafe if the incident results in:

1. The death of a person.
2. A person requiring medical treatment within 48 hours of exposure to a substance — acid splash, inhaled vapours, blood or body substances.
3. A person requiring immediate treatment as an in-patient in a hospital.
4. A person requiring immediate medical treatment for an amputation, a serious head injury, a serious eye injury, separation of skin from underlying tissue (degloving or scalping), electric shock, a spinal injury, loss of a bodily function, or a serious laceration.

Two of those catch manufacturers out. Serious laceration has no minimum depth and no minimum number of stitches — if it needed stitching, gluing or staples, it counts. Serious head injury expressly includes the loss or fracture of a tooth.

2. Incidents that expose a person to serious risk

You must also notify when an incident immediately or imminently exposes a person to a serious risk to health or safety from things such as:

• an uncontrolled escape, spillage or leakage of any substance, including dangerous goods
• an implosion, explosion or fire
• electric shock
• the fall or release from a height of any plant, substance or thing
• the collapse, overturning, failure or malfunction of, or damage to, prescribed plant
• the collapse or partial collapse of a building or structure

Nobody has to be hurt. A pallet of steel released from a forklift's tines beside a picker is notifiable even if the picker walks away untouched.

WorkSafe treats "serious risk" as having two limbs: the potential harm could have been death or serious injury, and the likelihood was not minor — there was a real chance of it eventuating. Both must be present.

What changed for plant and equipment on 1 July 2024?

From 1 July 2024, OHS Regulation 74 expanded the list of plant that triggers notification when it collapses, overturns, fails, malfunctions or is damaged in a way that immediately or imminently exposes someone to serious risk (WorkSafe Victoria, reviewed 11 November 2025). The prescribed list now covers:

Plant now prescribed
Plant that lifts or moves persons or materials
Pressure equipment
Tractors
Earth-moving machinery
Scaffolds
Temporary access equipment
Explosive-powered tools
Turbines
Amusement structures

WorkSafe's own explanation of the change is blunt: the previous list was limited and did not include commonly used higher-risk plant such as tractors, quad bikes, forklifts and excavators. If you run a factory with a forklift fleet, your notification exposure widened on that date. Many duty holders I meet still have pre-2024 wording in their incident procedure.

How do you report a notifiable incident?

1. Make the workplace safe and treat the injured person. Nothing in the law asks you to leave someone bleeding to protect evidence.
2. Phone WorkSafe on 13 23 60. Available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You will be given a reference number — write it on the incident file.
3. Preserve the incident site until an inspector arrives or directs otherwise.
4. Submit written notification within 48 hours on WorkSafe's approved form.
5. File the written record and keep it for at least 5 years, available for inspection.

"Immediately" means immediately. It does not mean after your internal investigation, after the site manager gets back from leave, or after you have spoken to a lawyer.

Step	Deadline
Phone notification (13 23 60)	Immediately on becoming aware
Preserve incident site	Until an inspector arrives or directs
Written notification on approved form	Within 48 hours
Retain the written record	At least 5 years

When can you disturb the incident site?

An incident site may only be disturbed to protect a person's health and safety, to aid an injured person, or to take essential action to make the site safe or prevent a further incident. If an inspector wants the site held, they may issue a non-disturbance notice, which cannot exceed 7 days.

The practical trap is well-meaning: a supervisor tidies the area, sweeps the spill, and puts the guard back on before the inspector arrives. That helps nobody, and it is the sort of thing that shapes how an inspector reads your safety culture. If a guard was off the machine in the first place, expect questions about your machine guarding controls as well.

What are the penalties for failing to notify?

Section 38(5) of the OHS Act makes it an offence to contravene the duty to notify, the 48-hour written record duty, or the record-keeping duty. The maximum fine is 240 penalty units for a natural person and 1,200 penalty units for a body corporate. An offence under s 38(5) is an indictable offence.

A penalty unit is $209.10 for the financial year commencing 1 July 2026 (Treasurer's notice under s 6 of the Monetary Units Act 2004, published 5 May 2026). On those figures the maximums work out to roughly $50,184 for an individual and $250,920 for a company — for the failure to report, entirely separate from any prosecution over the incident itself.

Who is responsible for notifying?

The duty sits with the employer or self-employed person who has management and control of the workplace. You can delegate the phone call to a supervisor, but you cannot delegate the legal responsibility. More than one duty holder can be on the hook for the same incident — a principal contractor and a subcontractor can both hold a duty where both employ people at that workplace.

One useful exception: you are not required to notify if you are the only person injured, harmed or exposed to the risk. WorkSafe still encourages you to.

What I tell manufacturers to do before the next one

The decision about whether an incident is notifiable should not be made at 2am by whoever happens to be on shift. Three things make it survivable:

1. A one-page notifiable-incident card at every phone and in every supervisor's induction, listing the eight injury types and the site-preservation rule.
2. A named person and a backup, on a roster, who owns the 13 23 60 call and the 48-hour form.
3. A live record — reference number, written notice, photographs, witness names — filed the same week, not reconstructed a year later when an inspector asks for it.

WorkSafe's own guidance is the tiebreaker for close calls: if you are still unsure after reading it, report it anyway. Notification is one duty among many, and it holds up best when it sits inside a wider workplace safety system rather than in one person's memory.

At Ardmor we run this as a managed service — a safety manager on call when the incident happens, plus the record trail sitting behind it, so nobody on your floor is guessing. If you want a clear read on where your site stands, book a site assessment.

Frequently asked questions

Do you have to report a near miss in Victoria? Yes, if it exposed someone to a serious risk to health or safety from immediate or imminent exposure to a listed event — for example a load falling from height, an explosion or fire, or an uncontrolled spill. Nobody has to be injured for the duty to arise.

How long do you have to notify WorkSafe of a serious injury? The phone notification on 13 23 60 must be made immediately on becoming aware of the incident. The written record on WorkSafe's approved form is due within 48 hours, and you must keep a copy for at least 5 years.

Is a cut that needs stitches a notifiable incident? A serious laceration requiring immediate medical treatment — including stitching, gluing or staples to prevent blood loss — is notifiable. WorkSafe states there is no minimum depth or number of stitches required for a cut to be a "serious laceration".

This article is general information for Victorian manufacturers, not legal advice. Last updated: 21 July 2026.