As an employer, robust health and safety processes are essential – not just for compliance, but to protect your workforce, your reputation and your bottom line.

A single serious incident can ripple through your company and even lead to legal consequences, including imprisonment in the most serious cases.

The figures below were all taken from the HSE figures for 2023/24.

During 2023/24 there were 138 fatal injuries to workers, up from 136 the previous year.

During 2023/24 employers reported 61,663 other injuries to workers, often caused by slips, trips and falls & manual handling for example.  The Labour Force Survey also reported that 604,000 people had sustained an injury at work.

• Slipping and tripping
• Manual handling
• Falling from heights
• Being struck by a moving or falling object

In 2023/24, 1.7 mllion workers experienced work-related ill health, including:

• Stress, depression, or anxiety.  776,000 cases.
• Musculoskeletal disorders: 543,000 cases.

£21.6 billion – the annual costs of of injuries and ill health from current working conditions (2022/23 figures).

2,257 mesothelioma deaths due to past asbestos exposures (2022 figures)

Each year thousands of people die from work-related diseases mainly due to exposures many years ago.   The number of cancer deaths has to be estimated rather than counted.

In 2023/24 an estimated 33.7 million working days were lost overall – the majority due to work-related ill health.

In 2022/23 there were 216 criminal prosecutions for health & safety offences prosecuted by the HSE, with a 94% conviction rate.  Fines totalled £35.8 million.  The courts have continued to issue significantly higher fines year on year and there have been significant fines including Tesco (£7.56m), Network Rail (£10m), BP (£15m), among others.

Prosecutions aren’t just limited to larger businesses.  Some examples are:

• A.I.M. Access Solutions Ltd – In April 2025, a scaffold company based in Merseyside was fined £60,000 following the death of a 45‑year‑old worker, Robert Duffy, due to unsafe scaffolding assembly.

• Best Car Wash Ltd (Tavistock) – In June 2024, fined £40,000 (plus ~£3k costs) for persistent electrical hazards affecting employees and the public. HSE enforcement notices had previously been served, but ignored.

• Harper UK (Aberdeen) – A small Aberdeen-based firm was fined £10,000 in June 2024 for breaching work-at-height regulations (Reg. 4(1), Sec. 2(1))—a typical example of neglect in micro-businesses.

• RM Gibbons Ltd – In May 2024, fined £40,000 (plus ~£9k costs) after a worker was fatally crushed by a command-arm from a mobile elevating work platform (MEWP); the director received a suspended custodial sentence (16 weeks) for neglect.

The HSE has highlighted that while the statistics show that Britain remains one of the safest places to work, there is still work to do to drive figures down.

Surveys continue to signal that senior UK business leaders expect a 10-25 % drop in share price if prosecuted for a fatal accident, with ~10 % warning of a 25 %+ loss.

Employers’ liability insurance premiums remain high, with smaller businesses most exposed if they can’t demonstrate proactive risk management.