The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) published new figures today to show a downward trend in the number of people injured at work. However, conversely, figures of injuries in the agricultural sector remain high.

The statistics published by the HSE show that in the UK between April 2010 and March 2011:
• 24,726 major injuries were reported, such as amputations, fractures and burns, to employees - a rate of 99 injuries per 100,000 workers - compared with 26,268 in 2009/10.
• 90,653 other injuries serious enough to keep people off work for four or more days were reported - a rate of 363.1 injuries per 100,000 workers - down from 96,427 the previous year.
• An estimated 1.2 million people said they were suffering from an illness caused or made worse by their work, down from 1.3 million in 2009/10. Of these, 500,000 were new illnesses occurring in-year.
• 171 workers fatally injured - up from 147 the previous year.

The new data confirms that the UK continues to have the lowest rate of fatal occupational injuries in Europe as well as one of the lowest levels of work-related ill health.

The agricultural (221.9 major injuries per 100,000 employees) industry reported one of the highest levels of work-related injuries, with disproportionately high numbers of incidents. One in five workplace deaths in the UK occur in the agricultural sector, even though farmers are only a tiny part of the working population. There were 39 deaths in the farming industry in 2001/2002, 38 deaths in 2009/2010 and 34 deaths in 2010/2011.

The toll of injury and ill-health resulted in 26.4 million working days being lost, an average of 15 days per case - 22.1 million to ill-health and 4.4 million to injury.