Top 10 UK Workplace Equipment and Lifting Safety Statistics Every Duty Holder Should Know (2026)

Most of our working week is quiet, methodical work: a forklift's chains measured for wear, an extraction hood tested for airflow, a harness checked stitch by stitch. The reason the law asks for it is set out once a year, when the Health and Safety Executive publishes its statistics on who was hurt at work and how.

This post pulls together ten of those figures for the people who carry the legal duty: employers, site managers, facilities managers and anyone else who owns or controls equipment that others rely on. Every number comes from HSE, covers Great Britain, and is given with its statistical year.

1. 126 Workers Were Killed at Work in 2025/26

HSE's report Work-related fatal injuries in Great Britain, 2026, published in July 2026, records 126 workers killed in work-related accidents between April 2025 and March 2026. The figure is provisional and will be finalised in July 2027. It is two fewer than the year before and, leaving aside the years affected by the pandemic, provisionally the lowest number recorded in a single year.

By industry, construction accounted for 25 of the worker deaths, agriculture, forestry and fishing for 22, manufacturing for 18, and transportation and storage for 15. Over the five years to 2025/26, HSE puts the fatal injury rate in construction at around five times the average across all industries.

The takeaway: the long-term direction is down, but well over a hundred people still do not come home from work each year.

2. Falls From Height Killed 31 Workers, More Than Any Other Kind of Accident

Of the 126 worker deaths in Great Britain in 2025/26, 31 were falls from a height. HSE's five-year figures for 2021/22 to 2025/26 show an average of 37 deaths a year from falls, 28% of all worker fatalities, and falls have been the main cause of work-related fatal injury in almost every year since at least 2001/02.

Construction carries the heaviest share. Over half of all construction deaths in that five-year period were falls from a height, an average of 19 a year. Falls also accounted for 8% of the non-fatal injuries to employees that employers reported under RIDDOR in 2024/25.

Work at height is only as safe as the equipment being trusted: the ladder, the harness, the lanyard, the anchor it is clipped to. Where it is exposed to conditions that could cause dangerous deterioration, the Work at Height Regulations 2005 require it to be inspected at suitable intervals by a competent person, which is the purpose of our work at height equipment inspections.

The takeaway: if your people leave the ground, the kit that gets them up and the kit that catches them deserve the closest scrutiny.

3. 21 Workers Were Killed by Moving or Falling Objects and 18 by Something Collapsing or Overturning

These two categories from HSE's 2025/26 provisional figures for Great Britain are where lifting operations show up when they go wrong. Being struck by a moving object, a category HSE defines to include flying and falling objects, killed 21 workers. Being trapped by something collapsing or overturning killed a further 18.

Over the five years to 2025/26, being struck by a moving object accounted for an average of 22 deaths a year, 17% of the total. HSE does not split these categories by type of equipment, so they are not all lifting accidents, but a dropped load, a failed sling and an overturned machine all land here.

Garages see their own version of the same risk. HSE's guidance for motor vehicle repair states that vehicles falling or rolling off incorrectly positioned jacks or stands are one of the main causes of fatal accidents in that trade, and recommends that vehicle lifts are thoroughly examined every six months.

This is the ground that LOLER thorough examinations cover: cranes, hoists, vehicle lifts and lifting accessories, examined by someone independent of the people who maintain them.

The takeaway: a load only has to come down once, and wear in chains, ropes and hydraulics is rarely visible to the person using the equipment every day.

4. 24 Workers Were Killed After Being Struck by a Moving Vehicle

Being struck by a moving vehicle was the second most common kind of fatal accident in 2025/26, with 24 deaths across Great Britain in HSE's provisional count. Over the five years to 2025/26 it averaged 22 deaths a year, 17% of all worker fatalities.

Over that period, HSE reports that moving vehicles accounted for 48% of worker deaths in waste and recycling, 30% in transportation and storage, and 23% in agriculture, forestry and fishing. RIDDOR figures exclude injuries from work-related road collisions, so this is a picture of vehicles moving around workplaces, not crashes on the public road.

On a site or in a yard, the vehicle is often an item of plant. Dumpers, rollers, telehandlers and lift trucks are all work equipment in law, and their brakes, steering and warning devices are part of what an inspection looks at.

The takeaway: segregating people from plant matters most, but it depends on the plant itself doing what the driver expects when it counts.

5. Contact With Moving Machinery Killed 10 Workers

Ten workers in Great Britain died after contact with moving machinery in 2025/26, according to HSE's provisional figures. It is the fifth kind of accident on HSE's list of main causes, and together the five account for around 80% of all worker deaths that year.

Machinery risk is not confined to factories. Saws, presses, crushers and conveyors turn up in joinery shops, builders' yards, recycling sites and vehicle workshops.

The Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 require work equipment to be suitable for its purpose, kept in efficient working order and good repair, and inspected at suitable intervals where it is exposed to conditions causing deterioration that could lead to danger. Guards, interlocks and emergency stops are the kind of safeguard that deteriorates or gets bypassed over time, which is the purpose of a PUWER inspection.

The takeaway: a machine that still runs is not the same as a machine that is still safe.

6. An Estimated 680,000 Workers Were Injured at Work in 2024/25, and Employers Reported 59,219 of the More Serious Injuries

Deaths are the visible tip. HSE's annual statistics for 2024/25, published in November 2025, estimate from the Labour Force Survey that 680,000 workers in Great Britain sustained a non-fatal injury at work. Of those, 124,000 led to more than seven days off.

Employers reported 59,219 non-fatal injuries to employees under RIDDOR in the same year. RIDDOR only captures the more serious cases, those on a specified list or causing more than seven days' absence, and HSE estimates that employers report only around half of the injuries they should.

The takeaway: for every fatal accident there are thousands of injuries, and the reported count understates them.

7. 40.1 Million Working Days Were Lost to Work-Related Illness and Injury

HSE estimates that 40.1 million working days were lost in Great Britain in 2024/25 to work-related ill health and non-fatal workplace injuries. Ill health accounted for 35.7 million of those days and injuries for 4.4 million.

On average, each injured worker took around 6.5 days off, and each person with a work-related illness around 19.1 days.

The takeaway: an accident costs working time as well as causing harm, and for a small contractor or a lean facilities team one absence can stall a job.

8. Workplace Injury and Ill Health Cost Great Britain £22.9 Billion

HSE's Costs to Britain estimate puts the total cost of workplace injuries and new cases of work-related ill health at £22.9 billion in 2023/24, the latest year available. Ill health accounts for £16.4 billion of that and injury for £6.5 billion. HSE expresses this as a unit cost of roughly £10,000 per injury case and £24,200 per ill health case.

Individuals bear most of it, at £13.4 billion, largely in lost quality of life. Employers carry £4.3 billion and government £5.2 billion. HSE's construction report puts that sector's share at an estimated £1.4 billion.

The takeaway: set against a cost like that, keeping examinations and inspections up to date is one of the cheapest controls a business has.

9. An Estimated 11,000 Lung Disease Deaths a Year Are Linked to Past Exposure at Work

HSE's Occupational Lung Disease statistics, published in November 2025, estimate that there are currently 11,000 lung disease deaths each year in Great Britain linked to past exposures at work. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease accounts for 35% of them and lung cancer not related to asbestos for 23%, with asbestos-related lung cancer and mesothelioma at 20% each.

These diseases take years to develop, so the deaths reflect past conditions. The exposures have not gone away. HSE estimates 22,000 new cases of breathing or lung problems caused or made worse by work each year, averaged over the last three years of the Labour Force Survey.

Dust and fume are what LEV thorough examination and testing exists to control, and COSHH requires that thorough examination and test at least once every 14 months, with shorter intervals for a few specified processes. When HSE carried out more than 1,000 woodworking inspections in 2022/23, it found 78% of businesses were not compliant in protecting workers from respiratory sensitisers, mainly wood dust, and took 402 enforcement actions. Maintenance and thorough examination of extraction was among the key areas of concern it listed.

The takeaway: extraction that is running is not necessarily extraction that is working, and the people breathing the air will not find out for years.

10. HSE Completed 246 Prosecutions With a 96% Conviction Rate and Over £33 Million in Fines

The Health and Safety Executive Annual Report and Accounts 2024/25 records 246 completed criminal prosecutions, a 96% conviction rate and over £33 million awarded in fines.

Prosecution is the far end of the scale. In the same year HSE issued over 4,400 notices, including approximately 3,200 Improvement Notices and 1,200 notices prohibiting a work activity that placed people at risk of death or serious injury.

Statutory examination feeds directly into this. Under LOLER, where a thorough examination finds a defect involving an existing or imminent risk of serious personal injury, the examiner must send a copy of the report to the relevant enforcing authority. We have set out what happens when lifting equipment is not LOLER compliant in a separate guide.

The takeaway: when HSE takes a case to court it almost always wins, so keep the record of what was examined, when, and by whom in good order.

The Bigger Picture

Read together, these ten figures show work in Great Britain becoming safer over the long term, with the remaining harm stubbornly concentrated in a handful of causes: falls from height, moving vehicles, falling and overturning loads, and machinery. Occupational lung disease kills many times more people than accidents do, only later and out of sight.

Almost every one of those causes has a piece of equipment at its centre, and each type of equipment has a regulation that says how it must be checked: LOLER for lifting, PUWER for work equipment, COSHH for extraction, PSSR for pressure systems and the Work at Height Regulations for access and fall protection. The intervals differ, and we have covered how often workplace equipment should be inspected in detail elsewhere.

HSE's next annual release, covering injuries and ill health in 2025/26, is due in November 2026.

Statistics sourced from the Health and Safety Executive: Work-related fatal injuries in Great Britain 2026, Kind of accident statistics 2025, Non-fatal injuries at work 2024/25, Working days lost 2024/25, Costs to Great Britain 2023/24, Construction statistics 2025, Occupational Lung Disease statistics 2025, the HSE Annual Report and Accounts 2024/25, HSE guidance on motor vehicle repair, an HSE woodworking bulletin of June 2023, and the regulations named above. All figures correct as of September 2026.