HSE website: Slips and Trips

The new 2019/20 Reports have been published by the HSE. The annual statistics for “Workplace fatal injuries in Great Britain 2021” is available as PDF from the HSE website. The site “Non-fatal injuries at work in Great Britain” shows that a third of all accidents are a result of slip, trips or falls on the same level. While there is an overall downward trend since 2000/01, it also shows how much safety can improve by eliminating or controlling the biggest cause of those non-fatal accidents.

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The HSE slips and trips website provides information on slips and trips in the workplace. It offers employers, workers, architects and designers advice and guidance to comply with health and safety law.

The Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 requires employers to ensure the health and safety of all employees and anyone affected by their work, so far as is reasonably practicable, which means balancing the level of risk against the measures needed to control the risk in terms of money, time or trouble. This includes taking steps to control slip and trip risks.

The HSE website provides comprehensive information on the causes of slip accidents with guidance on how to prevent slips and trips to ensure a safe workplace plus an FAQs section (with questions such as ‘How do I choose an appropriate floor surface for my workplace?’, ‘Are safety floors more difficult to clean?’, ‘What is surface roughness?’ and ‘How do I check whether my floor is slip resistant?’). It also offers a variety of resources and tools to support this guidance including methods to assess the slip resistance of flooring (members of the UKSRG can provide testing to these methods) and a technical information sheet on Preventing Slips & Trips at Work.

For more information: http://www.hse.gov.uk/slips/

(Published 02/2018, reviewed 06/2022)