September 7, 2005—The UK’s Health & Safety Commission (HSC) has published the latest detailed statistics on fatal injuries in HSE and local authority (LA) enforced sectors in 2004/05—Statistics of Fatal Injuries 2004/2005 (.pdf file). Bill Callaghan, Chair of the Health and Safety Commission (HSC), noted the improvement from previous years, but called for all sections of industry to continue to improve their control of risk.
The figures show that the number of fatally injured workers decreased by 7% to 220 in 2004-05 from 236 in 2003-04. The rate of fatal injury also decreased by 7% to 0.75 per hundred thousand workers, from 0.81, resulting in the lowest rate on record. There was a general downward trend in the rate in the 1990s, however it has risen twice since then, in 2000-01 and in 2003-04.
In 2004-05, 114 (52%) of worker fatalities occurred in the two industries of construction (72) and agriculture (42). The construction industry figure increased by one from 2003-04. However, due to a rise in employment, the rate actually fell by 3%, to 3.5 per hundred thousand workers, and continued the four-year downward trend, to the lowest level seen in the last 13 years.
Falling from a height continues to be the most common kind of accident overall, accounting for 24% of total fatal injuries to workers in 2004-05.
The number of fatal injuries of this kind decreased in 2004-05 from 68 to 53 There were 28 of these fatal falls in the construction industry, a welcome decrease from the previous year, although HSE feels that these deaths could also have been prevented. Being struck by a moving or falling object, and being struck by a moving vehicle, are the next most common kinds of fatal injury.
In manufacturing, the number of fatal injuries to workers rose from 30 in 2003-04, to 41 in 2004-05 (including nine deaths following an incident at a plastics factory in Scotland), reversing the recent downward trend. The rate of fatal injury to workers rose from 0.9 to 1.2 per hundred thousand workers.
In service industries in 2004-05, there were 63 fatal injuries to workers, a decrease from 81 in 2003-04. The rate of fatal injury also fell, from 0.35 per hundred thousand workers to 0.27 in 2004-05. This reverses the increasing trend of the previous three years.
For the combined three-year period of 2002-03 to 2004-05, the industries with the highest rate of fatal injury to employees include the recycling of waste and scrap (18.6 per hundred thousand employees); and the mining of coal, lignite, and peat extraction (10.2).
