Work-related fatalities fall to all-time low – HSE

July 9, 2026

A total of 126 workers were killed in work-related incidents in Great Britain in the past year, the lowest number on record, according to the latest annual fatality statistics from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).

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The figure, for 2025/26, compares to 128 fatalities recorded by the executive for 2024/25 and 138 for 2023/24, making it provisionally the lowest number recorded in a single year, the HSE said. By comparison, 25 years ago (in 2005/06) the figure stood at 217 fatalities and it was 495 in 1981.

The industries with the highest number of deaths continued to be construction (25) and agriculture, forestry and fishing (22), said the HSE.

Of all main industry sectors, agriculture, forestry and fishing continues to have the highest rate of fatal injury per 100,000 workers (8.09) followed by waste and recycling (5.47). This compared to an average 0.37 fatal injuries per 100,000 workers across all industries combined.

The most common cause of fatal injuries continues to be falls from a height (31), representing around a quarter of worker deaths in 2025/26. This was followed by being struck by a moving vehicle or a moving object.

Workers aged 60 and over accounted for around a third of all fatalities during the year (40), despite that age group accounting for just 12% of the workforce. Men also accounted for the vast majority of worker fatalities in the period (93%).

A further 104 people who were not at work were killed as a result of work-related incidents in 2025/26. This referred to members of the public who were not directly working themselves at the time of the incident, said the HSE.

At the same time, HSE published the annual figures for the asbestos-related cancer mesothelioma. These showed that 2,146 people died from the disease in Great Britain in 2024, representing a fall of 109 compared with 2023. The figure was also substantially lower than the average of 2,508 deaths per year over the ten-year period 2011-2020.

Many current mesothelioma deaths still reflect exposure to asbestos that often occurred before the 1980s and annual deaths are expected to continue declining during the next decade, the executive added.

HSE chief executive Sarah Albon said of the figures: “We can be proud that Great Britain remains one of the safest places in the world to work, and the new analysis we have developed this year, for the first time, allows us to compare our safety record with a wide range of other advanced economies.”