A “levelling off” of workplace health and safety injury and illness figures in Britain could in part be down to the uptake of new workers during the economic recovery, according to the Health and Safety Executive’s chief statistician.
Alan Spence explained that new workers were more prone to higher rates of injury. His comments came as the HSE published new figures which revealed the number of work-related fatalities increased by nine on the previous year to 142 in 2014-15.
“There were 1.2 million workers who suffered a work-related illness last year and nearly half of those were new conditions that started during the year,” said Mr Spence. “We estimate that 600,000 work-related injuries during that year of which about a quarter involved people taking more than 7 days off work.”
The cost to the British economy came in at 27 million working days lost and approximately £14.3 billion, he added.
Mr Spence continued: “We know in recent years injuries, ill-health and working days lost have been following down trends and in fact the total estimated cost to Britain has fallen about 18% over the last decade.”
“With the latest figures there may be signs that some of these trends are levelling off. One possible reason for part of this is that the economic recovery has caused firms to take on new workers and, as new workers, we know that new workers tend to have higher rates of injury.”
Mr Spence underscored that Britain’s safety systems continue to “perform well” against a range of indicators compared with other European countries.
“For fatal injuries,” he explained, “we know the rate for the UK is consistently one of the lowest for the European Union.”
Safety video: watch Mr Spence explain more about the latest findings:
For more information on the report, visit: http://www.hse.gov.uk/index.htm
