Health and Safety
Executive / Commission
Surface engineering
This page provides information about the statistics of fatal and non-fatal injuries to workers in 2002/03p and recent years, for Great Britain. It provides messages for the treatment and coatings of metals industry identified by Standard Industrial Classification (SIC92), code 2851 ‘treatment and coating of metals’.
Top level rates of fatal and non-fatal injury to employees and the self-employed are presented for accidents in the treatment and coating of metals industry based on reports by employers and others under RIDDOR*, for all enforcing authorities.
Top-level statistics for topics such as numbers, rates and percentage share of injury, kinds of accident in the treatment and coatings of metals industry for employees and the self-employed contain provisional numbers and rates for 2002/03p. Rates of fatal and non-fatal injury are expressed per 100 000 employees, as employment data for the self-employed is not available.
Under the reporting regulations HSE (and local authorities) get to know of all fatal injuries, but it is known from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) that non-fatal injuries are under-reported. The latest reporting level for 2002/03p for employees’ non-fatal (major and over-3-day) injuries for the whole economy is 41% compared with 56% in manufacturing. There is a severe under-reporting from self-employed people, who are estimated to report less than 5% of non-fatal injuries. This means that numbers and rates of injury are more meaningful for employees than the self-employed.
In 2001/02 HSE introduced a new structure for the kind classification which retains the same definitions for the kinds of accident (slip/trip, handling, fall) but identifies further detail on the ways in which those occur. These classifications are accompanied by new guidelines to improve the kind injury reports.
Overall the proportion of ‘falls from a height’ accidents had remained steady until 2000/01. It has since dropped, which may in part be due to the new guidelines. Some major injuries, which were previously counted as falls from a height, are now counted as slip/trips. One main decrease in falls relates to falls from plant/platforms and surfaces such as floors, pavements, stairs and steps. These are areas where the new guidelines for 2001/02 clarify the distinction between a slip/trip on the level and a fall from a height when an injured person slips at height and then falls to a lower level.
Provisional figures are denoted by ‘p’.
* Injury statistics are compiled from reports made to HSE and local authorities under RIDDOR, the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations (1995).