Don’t let this year’s harvest be the death of you – Health & Safety at Work

With high numbers and rates of fatal injury, agriculture is one of the riskiest industry sectors for accidents at work.

Figures published in the Health and Safety Executive's (HSE) report 'Fatal injuries in agriculture, forestry and fishing in Great Britain 2022/23' show 27 people were killed as a result of farming and other agriculture-related activities during the year.

Report for 2022/23

• Fatal injuries in agriculture, forestry and fishing in Great Britain 2022/23 (PDF)
• Summary of individual fatal injuries 2022/23 (PDF)

Being injured by an animal (cattle) caused most deaths over the year.  Older workers (45+) account for 80% of all work-related fatalities in agriculture over the last 5 years. 

Overall, vehicle incidents are the number one cause of deaths and serious injuries in British agriculture with forty-eight lives lost in farm vehicle incidents in last five years and hundreds injured. In March 2023 the HSE also launched a campaign to reduce farm vehicle deaths and injuries with a farm vehicle safety campaign and created a website which brings together lots of advice on using vehicles safely on farms. Campaign launched to reduce farm vehicle deaths and injuries  | HSE Media Centre

Agriculture has the worst rate of worker fatal injury (per 100,000 workers) of all the main industry sectors, with the annual average injury rate over the last five years around 21 times as high as the all-industry rate.

This reinforces the need for those involved in agribusiness and farming to take particular care to ensure they have complied with their legal duties and reduced the risks to their employees and workers as far as practicable. 

In the event of a significant injury or a death, there will inevitably be an investigation by the Health & Safety Executive (HSE). Individual managers and directors risk losing their liberty, and businesses risk fines running into hundreds of thousands of pounds. 

The central legal messages that all those with managerial responsibility should know are these:

• Every employer or dutyholder has a legal duty, under the Health & Safety at Work Act 1974 to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare at work of all employees.
• Every employer or dutyholder also has a legal duty under the Act to carry out business in such a way as to ensure that persons not in his employment who may be affected by the business are not exposed to risks to their health or safety. This includes visiting workers such as agency workers or contractors as well as visitors.
• Every employer or dutyholder is legally required, by the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, to conduct a “suitable and sufficient” assessment of the risks to the health and safety of his employees and others that arise out of all of the activities associated with the business.
• Such risk assessments must be reviewed if there is reason to suspect they are no longer valid or there has been a significant change to the matters to which the assessment relates.
• You are required to report significant injuries to the HSE, under the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations (RIDDOR). Go to www.hse.gov.uk/riddor and complete the appropriate online report form.
• There are of course also specific regulations covering everything from working at height to fire safety. You should know those which apply to your operations.

As an employer and/or dutyholder you will need to carry out a risk assessment of the various work undertaken, identifying the all of the hazards that could cause harm; who could be harmed and the control measures that are needed to avoid or minimise those risks. Record the main findings in writing and communicate them clearly to staff. Some form of induction training will almost certainly be required and in most cases further health and safety training needed.

You need to provide the necessary information, training or instruction to the worker in an understandable format to them. After providing information, instruction and training, you need to test their understanding either by questioning them or observing them at work. They must also be under the supervision of someone they can communicate with. If someone claims to have the necessary skills or competences, you need to assess this. In the case of forklift truck driving for example, an employer can only authorise a staff member to drive after they have completed a suitable course of training and been independently assessed. 

Breaches of these legal requirements are criminal offences that can result in a hefty fine or even imprisonment. Fines handed to dutyholders found guilty of safety and health offences increased by 80 per cent up to the last year despite a fall in the number of cases prosecuted. Magistrates can now impose far higher fines for health and safety offences than ever before. Plainly, the most serious breaches, and serious injuries or deaths, will be tried and/or sentenced by a Crown Court judge. 

The key message is identify your risks and address them. Make sure that each aspect of your operation has been risk assessed; that those risk assessments have been acted on; and that they are kept up to date. Make sure that your workers – whether employed or casual – know the risks; that they are trained to work safely; and that you monitor and ensure their compliance with safe systems of work. HSE reports of prosecutions make depressingly frequent reference to the following issues:

• Risk assessments having not been undertaken for obviously high-risk procedures.
• Workers not having read procedures or manuals.
• Workers not having been trained or being provided with inadequate equipment.
• Risk assessments that identified a problem but nothing having been done.
• Risk assessments that were plainly insufficient because they made no reference to risks that should have been quite plain.

The individual and corporate consequences of not making sure that Health and Safety duties are complied with could hardly be stronger. 

The HSE’s third edition of ‘Farmwise’ a useful resource, is downloadable for free here.