Health and safety figures show a lack of vitality

The Health and Safety Executive has admitted that targets for improving workplace health and safety, set out in the government’s Revitalising health and safety strategy in 2000, are unlikely to be met.

By 2010, the strategy said, the number of working days lost per worker from work-related injury and ill health should be reduced by 30%, and the incidence of work-related ill health and of fatal or major injuries should be cut by 20% and 10% respectively.

But the latest figures, covering the year 2006/07, show that progress on meeting these targets is way off course. Working days lost have fallen by only 10% since 2000, and cases of work-related ill health are down by less than 5%. And although the number of fatal or major injuries has fallen by 8%, the total number of deaths is higher now than it was at the turn of the century.

The strategy document is available at www.hse.gov.uk/revitalising/strategy.htm