Each year, the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) releases key statistics for occupational safety in the UK. These statistics include figures including number of injuries, number of workers suffering from work-related injuries or diseases, number of workers killed in work-related incidents, and the cost of work-related injuries and ill-health per year.
These figures represent a material compliance challenge for organisations: legal exposure, regulatory scrutiny, operational disruption, and the fundamental duty to protect workers. For compliance teams, HR, and EHS professionals, they also signal where regulators may focus their enforcement attention.
What are the headline HSE statistics for 2024/25?
The key figures from the 2024/25 HSE findings indicate:
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- 124 worker fatalities in work-related accidents in 2024/25.
- An estimated 680,000 working people suffered non-fatal injuries, based on Labour Force Survey (LFS) self-reports.
- 59,219 non-fatal injuries were reported by employers under RIDDOR.
- 1.9 million people are suffering from a work-related illness, including:
- 964,000 cases of stress, depression, or anxiety and
- 511,000 musculoskeletal disorder (MSD) cases.
The difference between the LFS estimate (680,000) and RIDDOR (59,219) demonstrates that injuries, even those below RIDDOR’s reporting threshold, are still a prevalent regulatory risk.
What is the impact of these figures?
Preventing workplace injuries, ill health, and fatalities is fundamentally a moral obligation; every worker should be able to go home safe and well at the end of the working day.
Further to that, organisations have a duty of care under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 to protect their workers' safety, dignity and wellbeing. That duty extends to assessing risks, implementing controls, monitoring effectiveness, and maintaining evidence of those activities. The duty of care applies regardless of profit margins, sector, or organisational size. Failure to fulfil this duty of care can give rise to prosecution, fines, and litigation.
However, the business argument runs deeper than fines and litigation. Organisations with strong safety cultures attract and retain talent, build trust with customers and investors, and operate with the operational efficiency that comes from fewer disruptions, lower absence rates and engaged workforces. Reputational damage from a serious incident ripples across social media, recruitment pipelines and market confidence in ways that are difficult to repair.
The HSE estimates the annual cost of workplace injuries and new cases of work-related ill health at £22.9 billion for 2023/24. This reinforces the message that prevention is both a legal obligation and a strategy for business resilience, and should be foundational to how organisations function.
What is driving work-related ill health in 2024/25?
The 2024/25 data shows that stress, depression, and anxiety now account for roughly half of all reported work-related ill health (964,000 cases). Traditionally, safety compliance centred on physical hazards such as machinery, chemicals, falls, and manual handling. Psychosocial risks (such as workload, role ambiguity, bullying, change management, and lack of support) have often been treated as HR matters rather than safety compliance matters. However, findings such as this one blur the traditional distinction between the two areas.
Musculoskeletal disorders remain a substantial portion of work-related ill health (511,000 cases). UK regulations such as The Health and Safety (Display Screen Equipment) Regulations 1992, PUWER 1992, and the Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992 require employers to assess and mitigate risks of musculoskeletal injuries and diseases. Reactive and retrospective approaches to musculoskeletal risks are not sufficient. Compliance requires proactive risk assessments and controls: from understanding your risks, identifying high-risk tasks and workers, and implementing controls before injury occurs.
Together, poor mental health and musculoskeletal disorders drive a staggering loss of productivity of 40.1 million working days lost in 2024/25, with:
- 22.1 million days lost to stress and mental health
- 7.1 million days lost to MSDs
- 4.4 million days lost to non-fatal injuries
Which industries show higher-than-average risk in the HSE statistics from 2024/25?
HSE’s industry breakdown highlights that the risk profile differs between ill health and injury.
For ill health, rates are statistically higher than average in:
- Human health and social work,
- Public administration and defence, and
- Education.
For non-fatal injury, higher rates are seen in:
- Accommodation and food services,
- Construction,
- Transportation and storage, and
- Wholesale/retail, including motor repair.
Fatalities remain concentrated in traditionally high-risk sectors, led by construction and agriculture/forestry/fishing.
What should businesses do in light of the HSE statistics 2024/25 findings?
For many organisations, the gap between having a safety policy and demonstrating compliance is vast. Regulators don't accept "we take safety seriously" or "everyone knows the rules." They expect:
- Risk identification and risk assessments
- The implementation of effective control measures
- Up-to-date information and documentation in place
- Regular and ongoing monitoring, inspections, and audits
- Corrective actions taken in good time, with evidence of closure
- Regulatory engagement, audit readiness, and good organisation of documents and communications
Gaining an accurate understanding of current conformity with all EHS legislation is a crucial first step for all businesses. Organisations need a baseline to understand what areas need attention and improvement. Further to this, organisations need to maintain this understanding of conformity, meaning that they should reassess regularly to capture any changes to their operations and controls, as well as any changes to the legislation.
The data points to three practical priorities for every organisation to reassess, control, and monitor:
- Strengthen psychosocial risk management - Review workload, role clarity, change management and support structures, particularly in sectors with higher stress rates.
- Reinforce MSD prevention - Focus on ergonomic design, manual handling controls, and early intervention case management.
- Improve reporting, evidence, and assurance - Ensure risk assessments, training records, inspections, and corrective actions are documented and retrievable for audit and regulator engagement.
All three of these priorities can be assessed and actioned using iCOR, taking you from uncertain to confident in compliance. Through a self-audit tool, structured legal registers, task assignment, evidence capture, and dashboard oversight across sites, using iCOR can support a defensible compliance trail, and help organisations understand their obligations and areas for improvement.
The 2024/25 figures are sobering, but they're also a roadmap. They show where risks concentrate, which sectors need tighter controls, and what regulators expect to see. Acting on insights such as the HSE's statistics is how organisations move from reactive to defensible compliance.