Annual statistics on work-related ill health and workplace injuries in Great Britain have been published by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) for the 2023/2024 reporting period.
A series of data sources are used by the HSE in order to pull together information on injury and ill-health reporting, including RIDDOR reports and data from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) run by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
They provide figures on the amount of workers who suffered from a work-related illness and disease, injury or fatality, along with the total number of working days lost due to illness and injury in Great Britain.
Here we'll give you a run through of the main statistics.
Work-related ill-health and disease
1.7 million workers were reported to be suffering from work-related ill-health in 2023/24 (this is down from 1.8 million the previous year). 609,000 of these were new cases of work-related ill-health, with the rest long-standing cases.
Of these cases, 46% (776,000) were attributed to stress, depression or anxiety:
The industries with higher-than-average rates of work-related stress, depression or anxiety were (highest first):
32% of cases (543,000) were due to musculoskeletal disorders:
The industries with higher-than-average rates of musculoskeletal disorders were (highest first):
Work-related musculoskeletal disorders by body area affected were:
21% of cases of work-related ill health (354,000) were attributed to other illnesses.
Statistics for occupational lung diseases are usually reported a year later than other illness rates. In 2022 there were 2,257 mesothelioma deaths reported with a similar number of lung cancer deaths linked to past exposure to asbestos.
Workplace injury
A total of 4.1 million working days were lost due to workplace injury in 2023/24. This is an increase from 3.7 million working days lost due to workplace injury in 2022/23.
604,000 workers sustained a workplace injury in that period (an increase from 561,000 in the 2022/23 period).
79% of these injuries (476,000) were injuries with an up to seven-day workplace absence. 21% of reported injuries (127,000) resulted in over seven days of absence.
There were 61,663 RIDDOR reportable non-fatal work-related injuries to employees in 2023/24, an increase from 60,645 reported in the 2022/23 period.
Of the RIDDOR reportable injuries, the most common types of accidents were:
The industries with the highest rates of self-reported workplace injuries were (highest first):
Workplace fatalities
In 2023/24 there were 138 workers tragically killed in work-related incidents. This is an increase of 3 from the previous year where 135 workers lost their lives in workplace incidents.
Working days lost and costs
There were a total of 33.7 million working days lost in 2023/24 due to work-related ill health and injury. This is a decrease from the 35.2 million working days lost in 2022/23.
The annual estimated costs for 2022/23 of workplace injury and new cases of work-related ill-health (there is a delay in these figures compared to other reporting data), are:
For more information, see:
