Personal injury in the workplace

Accidents at Work

Workplace injuries have fallen notably over the past ten years, according to statistics recently published by the Health and Safety Executive - but with almost 600,000 workers having an accident in the workplace in 2011/2012 there is clearly still work to be done to tackle injury to employees.

Figures from the HSE show that numbers of both self reported injury and injuries reported by employers have dropped by significantly over the past decade, but despite this, 212,000 injuries in 2011/2012 led to an absence of three days or more.

Of the 591,000 accidents recorded, 156,000 caused the employee affected to be out of the workplace for more than seven days, showing the potential severity of a large proportion of the accidents.

As well as the more than half a million people injured in the workplace in 2011/2012, 173 workers were sadly killed.

When the figures were broken down into specific kinds of accidents it was found that two thirds of fatal injuries fell into one of four categories – falls from height, being struck by a moving object, being struck by a vehicle, being trapped beneath something which has collapsed.

One in seven fatalities to workers were caused by accidents involving fire, electricity, explosion or drowning/asphyxiation, the HSE figures also revealed.

The most reported injuries by far were those which can be defined as handling, lifting or carrying injuries.

It’s encouraging to see injury figures falling year-on-year but more still needs to be done to avoid employees being hurt while going about their work. A recent press release on the HSE site detailed a case of a Staffordshire employee who lost the tip of a finger and suffered hand injuries due to a machine missing essential guarding – while such simple breaches are still being made there is still progress to be made in health and safety.

This post was provided by Grieves personal injury solicitors, of Huddersfield, UK.  If you’ve been injured in an accident in the UK, make a serious injury claim, take a look at the compensation calculator to see how much you could claim.