Series details: CRDA/58

Every year in the United Kingdom about 5,000 people die as a result of an accident in the home, or during their leisure time; over 2 million people are treated in hospitals; and another 1.5 million consult a general practitioner. The cost to society of UK home accident injuries was estimated (in 1996) at £25,000 million a year.

The Home Accident Surveillance System (HASS), a system for collecting information about home accidents, was set up by the Consumer Safety Unit of the Department for Trade and Industry (DTI), and came into operation in 1976. Both the Home Accident Surveillance System (HASS) and the Leisure Accident Surveillance System (LASS) were funded and maintained by the DTI since 1976. The systems contain records of non-fatal accidents occurring in the home or at leisure, which caused a serious enough injury to warrant a visit to hospital, since the start of 1978. In 1992, the system became fully computerised, resulting in two linked databases.

The purpose of the system was the collection of information to underpin accident prevention policy, and thus to improve consumer safety. Hence, the database holds records of accidents to consumers involving injury, or suspected injury.

Information from the HASS/LASS databases was always made freely available to anyone with an interest in accident prevention, or home and leisure safety. The information produced by the Surveillance System was used extensively by:

• The Consumer Safety Unit of the DTI and other Government Departments, to aid preparation of legislation;
• Trade associations and manufacturers, to improve product design;
• Organisations such as the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, the British Standards Institution and the Consumers' Association;
• Members of the medical profession and academics, to improve safety;
• Any organisation with an interest in safety or the prevention of accidents.

Information was provided in the HASS annual report, in the form of standard tables. Interested parties could also enquire directly to the Department to obtain customised analyses from the system in tabular form, or as listings of individual case histories. In its penultimate Annual Report, it is stated that HASS contained 6.8 million accident records collected over 20 years. 1

The success of the system led to the setting up of an EEC equivalent, the European Home and Leisure Accident Surveillance System (EHLASS).

On 2 May 2003, it was announced that the DTI would no longer fund the collection and publication of HASS data. Data for the final years up to this date was entered into the database, and included in the final HASS Report. However, the dataset as transferred to NDAD includes no 2003 data.

The Home Accident Surveillance System dataset was created by the Consumer Safety Unit of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). For information on the history of the DTI, see the Administrative History of the Department of Trade and Industry.

Following the cessation of the HASS/LASS database in May 2003, DTI entered into an agreement with The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA). A copy of the complete database was transferred to RoSPA who agreed to provide an enquiry service based on the HASS database for a further five years (ie until May 2008).

The primary aim of the HASS/LASS systems was to provide information that supported the prevention of injuries sustained by consumers in avoidable accidents in the home, or in leisure pursuits. The data demonstrated this by showing the nature and size of problem areas; allowing trends to be monitored; highlighting where in-depth research was needed; and measuring the success of initiatives to solve identified problems.

For further information about the scope and content of the dataset, see Links to dataset catalogues.

Since the DTI announced that after 2 May 2003 it would no longer fund the collection and publication of HASS data, no further accruals of the data are expected.

The Home Accident Surveillance System dataset and its related documentation are public records under the Public Records Acts, 1958 and 1967. The National Archives has assigned the dataset the series reference NK 3. The contents of the dataset are also affected by the Consumer Protection Act.

The Home Accident Surveillance System and its related documentation are open to the public, apart from certain fields in the annual tables containing personal details which could reveal the identity of an accident victim. Under Section 40 of the Freedom of Information Act, these fields will remain closed for 100 years. They will be opened on an annual basis, with the earliest (1978) opening in 2079 and the latest (2002) opening in 2103.

The Home Accident Surveillance System datasets and related dataset documentation are Crown Copyright. Copies may be made for private study and research purposes only.

The data in the Home Accident Surveillance System is registered under the Data Protection Acts. Individual subject access is not permitted.

The language of the materials is English.

Documents relating to the Home Accident Surveillance System dataset have been transferred to NDAD. See the Dataset Documentation Catalogue for further details.

NDAD holds copies of the Annual Report on data in the Home Accident Surveillance System, starting with the fourth Annual Report (1980) until the Final report issued in 2003. In addition, NDAD holds the published report of the European Home and Leisure Accident Surveillance System for 1996; and published information packs and press handouts. Copies of these publications have been transferred to NDAD: see the Dataset Documentation Catalogue for further details.

The Home Accident Surveillance systems was, at the time of transfer, being run on a PC Local Area Network, with 4 PCs linked to a stand-alone server.

In 1993, the DTI's CSU central computer system was a DEC Risc based system and participating hospitals were using freestanding DEC Risc workstations to enter the data

The DEC Risc workstations used by the hospitals to enter the data ran a GUI based data entry system built for HASS using Ingres Windows 4GL.

The DTI's central computer system ran Ultrix (DEC's version of UNIX).

At time of transfer, Version 4.0 of smartFOCUS Viper software was used to run database queries, analyse the data in the database and produce sophisticated statistical reports from it.

In 1993 an Ingres relational database, running under Ultrix, was used to hold the data. The system components were linked to a SPSSX statistical system.

From some unknown date after 1993 up until 2003 a Microsoft Access database was used for data collection; before that date the data was sent to the DTI on magnetic tapes.

The Home Accident Surveillance System (HASS) and the Leisure Accident Surveillance System (LASS) were, from 1992, used as two linked databases. The original dataset as transferred to NDAD comprised two groups of six datafiles from these databases. For further information about the table structure, see the Dataset catalogue.

Dataset catalogues provide more detailed information about individual datasets, and are currently available for the following dataset(s):

1. Working for a Safer World. The Home Accident Surveillance System: Twenty-third Annual Report on 1999 data, p 8. London: Department of Trade and Industry, Consumer Affairs Directorate, February 2001. Dataset Documentation Catalogue, reference CRDA/58/DD/1/20.