The Confidential Incident Reporting & Analysis Service (CIRAS) is a confidential safety reporting service for health, safety and wellbeing concerns raised by workers in the UK transport industry. It is funded by members and run independently, though is a wholly owned subsidiary of

Rail Safety and Standards Board The Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB) is a British independent company limited by guarantee. Interested parties include various rail industry organisations, including Network Rail, train operating companies (TOCs), and rolling stock compa ...

(RSSB). The service covers the following sectors: passenger and freight train operators, light rail, Network Rail and its suppliers, London Underground, and Transport for London (TfL) bus operators.

History

CIRAS
was originally created in 1996 by a team from

Strathclyde University The University of Strathclyde ( gd, Oilthigh Shrath Chluaidh) is a public research university located in Glasgow, Scotland. Founded in 1796 as the Andersonian Institute, it is Glasgow's second-oldest university, having received its royal c ...

. Other rail lines expressed interest in the project and several rail lines in Scotland voluntarily joined the system. After the

Ladbroke Grove rail crash The Ladbroke Grove rail crash (also known as the Paddington rail crash) was a rail accident which occurred on 5 October 1999 at Ladbroke Grove in London, England, when two passenger trains collided almost head-on after one of them had passed a ...

in 1999,

John Prescott John Leslie Prescott, Baron Prescott (born 31 May 1938) is a British politician who served as Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and as First Secretary of State from 2001 to 2007. A member of the Labour Party, he w ...

mandated that all mainline rail in the UK come under CIRAS effective in 2000. From 2001 until 2009, the CIRAS Charitable Trust provided funding for operations, before it formally became part of RSSB. As well as providing a service to all UK rail workers and operating throughout England, Scotland and Wales, CIRAS extended its reach to include London bus operators early in 2016. Outside London, Stagecoach UK and Lothian buses are now members too.

Operation

CIRAS provides a reporting process for UK and ROI transport workers to report incidents or concerns about rules and procedures, facilities, equipment, or training and briefing. Reports can be raised via telephone call, freepost, or vi
web enquiry form
Regardless of the way in which a report was raised, a reporting analyst will always interview the reporter and ensure that the final report does not contain any information that might identify him or her. These reports are sent to the responsible company for review, action, and response. The original reporter receives a written copy of the response provided by the company. It is worth noting that the responding company does not have to be the one the reporter works for (for example, a train driver might receive a response from Network Rail if the original report was about the infrastructure). Selected reports are also published in the quarterl
CIRAS newsletter Frontline Matters
which can be found on the website: www.ciras.org.uk.

Significance

CIRAS is recognized as creating one of the safety industries taxonomies to classify

human error Human error refers to something having been done that was "unintended consequences, not intended by the actor; not desired by a set of rules or an external observer; or that led the task or system outside its acceptable limits".Senders, J.W. and M ...

and accidents.Wallace,B, and Alastair Ross. ''Beyond Human Error: Taxonomies and Safety Science''; (CRC Press 2006). It is an example of a reporting system which collects reports, including "near-misses", as a means of prevention instead of reporting only adverse outcomes. Around 70 per cent of reports lead to some form of positive action - this is quite remarkable given that around two-thirds of all CIRAS reports have been reported internally before ending up at CIRAS after an 'unsatisfactory' response has been obtained.

Sources

Ladbroke Grove rail crash
Report Part I">Ladbroke Grove rail crash">Ladbroke Grove rail crash
Report Part I
RSSB - CIRAS Information

References

External links

* *
CHIRP
** CHIRP for Aviation – Confidential Human Factors Incident Reporting Programme ** CHIRP for Maritime – Confidential Hazardous Incident Reporting Programme {{DEFAULTSORT:Confidential Incident Reporting and Analysis System (CIRAS) Rail transport in the United Kingdom Railway accidents and incidents in the United Kingdom Railway safety Rail accident investigators 1996 establishments in Scotland