So here we are at the end of yet another turbulent year but just in time to update on the industry HSE statistics for 2020/21 (Released last week), which continue to show a year-on-year fall in accident rates over the past five years.
Some of the key wider industry stats are shown below:
The reduction in the number of work-related illness and workplace injuries is likely to be a direct result of the increase in home-working. However, we know this does have its own pitfalls in terms of eroding the boundaries between working hours and home life. Anecdotal evidence across the industry already suggested that there was an increase in the number of reported incidents of stress and anxiety attributable to the pandemic, whereby the general public were directing frustrations at frontline services and service providers, however, I’m shocked to see a 57% increase.
It’s not all doom and gloom because the statistics show some very positive results regarding fatalities and the significant drop in fatalities across our industry. 3 fatalities were reported in 2020/21, which is a reduction from the annual average of 8 over the previous 5 years. However, this is still an industry average of 6.99 per 100,000 workers over a 5-year average. This puts us at 17 times the all industry average.
In terms of non-fatal injuries, Slips, Trips and Falls are still the highest percentage (31%) and manual handling injuries a close second at 27%. As we have to expect now that it is entwined in to our daily lives, the Coronavirus pandemic has clearly impacted health and safety statistics in 2020/21, however, there is no data available relating to working days lost and economic costs available so it’s very difficult to quantify this impact.
If you want to check out the HSE summary statistics then click here - Health and safety statistics 2021 (hse.gov.uk) but in the meantime, have a Happy (and safe) Festive Break!
