By Legal Futures Associate National Claims [1]
Britain’s workplace safety record is moving in two different directions.
The Health and Safety Executive’s latest health and safety statistics [2] show that 124 workers were killed in work-related accidents in 2024/25. Yet away from fatal accidents, work-related ill health remains a much bigger part of the picture. An estimated 964,000 workers experienced work-related stress, depression or anxiety during the same period.
For the claims sector, those figures raise an important question. Are traditional ideas about employer liability keeping pace with the risks employees actually face?
At National Claims [3], the workplace injury cases we support reflect how varied those risks can be, from accidents involving falls, equipment and manual handling to conditions that develop over time. Assessing an employer’s liability claim therefore means looking beyond the injury itself to understand what happened, what risks were present and whether reasonable steps were taken to protect the employee.
The accident risk has not disappeared
The wider HSE figures show just how many people are still being injured at work.
An estimated 680,000 workers sustained a non-fatal workplace injury in 2024/25. Employers also reported 59,219 employee injuries under RIDDOR.
The causes are strikingly familiar. Slips, trips and falls on the same level accounted for 30% of reported non-fatal injuries. Handling, lifting or carrying accounted for 17%, while being struck by a moving object represented another 10%.
These figures show why many examples of employer’s liability claims begin with relatively ordinary workplace activities. A wet floor, an incorrectly stored object or a poorly managed lifting task can result in an injury that prevents somebody from working for weeks or months.
Other cases are considerably more serious. Employer liability head injury claims can arise following falls from height, workplace transport incidents or employees being struck by objects. In these cases, the immediate accident may be relatively easy to identify, but assessing its consequences can require detailed medical evidence and consideration of future care, employment and rehabilitation needs.
The circumstances behind a workplace injury are therefore just as important as the injury itself. Understanding what qualifies as a work accident in the UK [4] can help clarify which workplace incidents may be considered accidents and when an employer could be held responsible.
The bigger shift is happening away from the accident book
The most significant change in HSE’s data is arguably not happening on factory floors, construction sites or in warehouses.
Of the estimated 1.9 million workers experiencing work-related ill health in 2024/25, 964,000 were affected by stress, depression or anxiety caused or made worse by work. These conditions accounted for an estimated 22.1 million working days lost.
HSE also reports that rates of work-related stress, depression and anxiety in each of the latest three years remain higher than the 2018/19 pre-pandemic level.
For employers, this changes the risk conversation.
Health and safety management can’t focus exclusively on preventing physical accidents. HSE’s guidance on work-related stress [5] states that employers have a legal duty to protect workers from stress at work by carrying out a risk assessment and acting on its findings.
From a claims perspective, however, a psychological injury does not automatically mean an employer was negligent. An employer liability claim involving psychiatric harm can require careful consideration of whether the harm was reasonably foreseeable, what the employer knew about the circumstances and whether reasonable action was taken.
This makes evidence particularly important. Emails raising concerns, records of absence, occupational health referrals, workload discussions and previous complaints may all contribute to the wider picture.
Employer liability is about what happened before the injury
One of the misconceptions surrounding employers’ liability claims is that an accident at work automatically means an employer is responsible. This is incorrect.
The key issue is generally whether the employer failed to take reasonable steps to protect the employee and whether that failure caused or contributed to the injury.
An example of employer’s liability claim might involve a worker injured because machinery had not been properly maintained. Another could involve inadequate training before an employee was asked to carry out a hazardous task. Examples can also include unsafe working environments, failures to provide suitable protective equipment or known hazards that were not addressed.
The same principle applies where harm develops gradually. The absence of one identifiable accident does not necessarily remove the possibility of an employer liability claim, particularly where there is evidence that an occupational health risk was known but not properly managed.
This is why gathering the right evidence can be so important in employers’ liability claims. Risk assessments, maintenance records, training documents, accident reports, witness accounts and medical records can help establish not only what happened, but what could reasonably have been done differently.
A broader liability picture for employers
The scale of workplace harm has consequences beyond individual claims. Across injury and ill health, HSE estimates that 40.1 million working days were lost in 2024/25. The economic cost of workplace injury and new cases of work-related ill health was estimated at £22.9 billion for 2023/24.
For businesses, those numbers reinforce the value of prevention. Effective health and safety management increasingly means identifying both immediate hazards and patterns that could signal longer-term problems.
For the legal and claims sectors, they also demonstrate why employer liability claims can’t be viewed through the lens of workplace accidents alone.
At National Claims, cases can involve anything from a clearly identifiable accident to injuries where the circumstances and longer-term effects require much closer examination. Our role is to help establish the relevant facts and connect eligible claimants with experienced solicitors who can assess whether there are grounds for an employer liability claim.
The direction of HSE’s data is significant. Fatal workplace accidents remain relatively uncommon compared with the much wider burden of non-fatal injury and work-related ill health. With hundreds of thousands experiencing injury and almost one million reporting work-related stress, depression or anxiety, the employer liability conversation is becoming much broader.
For employers and legal professionals alike, the challenge is increasingly about recognising risk before it becomes a claim.