Great Britain’s workplace safety record has improved significantly over the long term. The latest figures from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) underline that progress: 126 workers were killed in work-related incidents during 2025/26, provisionally the lowest annual total recorded outside the years affected by the coronavirus pandemic. These figures cover fatal injuries to workers and do not include deaths from occupational diseases.
The long-term improvement is welcome. But the detail behind the headline shows why businesses cannot afford to become complacent.
The risk: familiar hazards continue to cause workplace deaths
Many of the hazards behind fatal accidents are not new or unusual. In 2025/26:
- Falls from height remained the largest single cause of worker fatalities, accounting for 31 deaths.
- Being struck by a moving vehicle accounted for 24 deaths.
- Being struck by a moving object accounted for 21 deaths.
- Becoming trapped by something collapsing or overturning accounted for 18 deaths.
- Contact with moving machinery accounted for 10 deaths.
These are familiar risks, which is precisely why the figures are important. Familiarity can make hazards feel routine, even when the potential consequences remain severe.
Which industries are most affected?
Construction recorded the largest number of worker fatalities in 2025/26, with 25 deaths, followed by agriculture, forestry and fishing with 22.
Looking at rates rather than numbers tells another important story. Agriculture, forestry and fishing continued to have the highest fatal injury rate at 8.09 deaths per 100,000 workers, followed by waste and recycling at 5.47, compared with 0.37 across all industries.
But this should not be read purely as an issue for traditionally high-risk sectors. Work at height, vehicles, machinery, contractors and falling objects occur across a much broader range of workplaces.
What could the HSE figures mean for your business?
Statistics cannot tell an individual business whether its controls are effective. What they can do is highlight where serious harm continues to occur and provide a useful prompt to test whether familiar risks are still being managed as rigorously as they should be.
Questions to ask about workplace safety
- When did you last look beyond the written risk assessment and observe how work at height actually takes place?
- Are vehicle and pedestrian movements separated in practice?
- Are machinery controls still suitable for the way equipment is now being used?
- What are near misses telling you?
The HSE notes that while the fatal injury rate has fallen over the long term, the pace of improvement has slowed in recent years.
What businesses should consider
Rather than treating the annual figures as another set of statistics, use them as a reason to challenge the everyday risks in your own organisation.
PIB Risk Management can support businesses through health and safety audits and reviews of processes, management systems and safe systems of work, helping identify gaps between what is written down and what happens in practice.
The takeaway: confidence or complacency?
Improving national figures are welcome, but the hazards causing the most serious incidents remain recognisable. The question for individual businesses is whether familiarity with those risks has created confidence or complacency.
Sources: HSE press release on annual work-related fatalities; HSE fatal injury statistics overview.
