Health and Safety weekly round-up: HSE fatality figures, a landmark occupational health prohibition, and RIDDOR reform

The week in UK and European health and safety

It has been a heavy week for anyone who tracks HSE enforcement and reporting. The regulator published its 2025/26 fatality statistics, issued a first-of-its-kind Prohibition Notice against an occupational health provider, and closed the RIDDOR consultation that could reshape what sites are required to report. If you are a site H&S manager preparing for your next safety committee or toolbox talk, here is what changed and what it means on the ground.

HSE publishes its 2025/26 fatality figures

HSE has published its work-related fatal injury statistics for Great Britain for 2025/26. The headline story is not a fall but a flattening: the fatal-injury picture has settled rather than dropped, and the incidents behind the numbers are the familiar ones. Vehicle-pedestrian conflicts, falls, and machinery contact still dominate. For a site H&S manager, the value of the release is less any single figure than the confirmation that the same event types keep recurring, which is exactly what your controls need to catch.

A landmark Prohibition Notice on health surveillance

On 3 July 2026, HSE issued its first-ever Prohibition Notice against an occupational health service provider, over inadequate health surveillance that risked serious, irreversible harm to workers. This is worth reading closely. It signals that HSE is willing to hold the surveillance function itself to account, not just the employer relying on it. If you outsource health surveillance, this is the week to check that what you are paying for actually catches the exposures it is meant to catch.

RIDDOR consultation closes

HSE's consultation on proposals to amend RIDDOR 2013, launched on 7 April 2026, closed on 30 June 2026. The proposals point towards a modernised reporting regime, and if you report incidents under RIDDOR they are worth understanding now rather than when the changes land. The consultation covers changes to how workplace injury and illness are reported.

CLP changes, higher charging rates, and new guidance

Three quieter but practical changes rounded out the period. HSE has confirmed changes to the GB CLP Regulation affecting the classification, labelling and packaging of chemicals. HSE has also updated its enforcement charging rates, including the Fee for Intervention, so if you may be subject to cost recovery it is worth checking the current hourly rate against the HSE charging page. And HSE has refreshed guidance relevant to managing PPE, heat stress, and biological hazards. With warmer months on many UK sites, the heat-stress material is the one to circulate first.

Enforcement in construction: a £400,000 fine

On 26 June 2026, HSE reported that an HS2 contractor was fined £400,000 after a tipper truck incident injured a driver. It is a straightforward but instructive case: a moving vehicle, a person, and a gap in separation. The enforcement outcome underlines where the fatal statistics keep pointing, and it is exactly the class of event that active safety was designed to interrupt.

Where active safety fits

The common concern across this week's news is prevention: HSE's emphasis on ill-health prevention, on reporting the incidents that actually happen, and on demonstrable risk reduction to ALARP levels. Most site cameras are passive. They record footage that gets reviewed after something goes wrong, which is useful for investigation but does nothing in the moment. SAIFI Edge is built for the opposite job. It watches for the specific conflicts your site actually runs, a forklift crossing into a pedestrian aisle, a breach of an exclusion zone around a tipper, and triggers a physical response: a barrier drops, a gate holds, a projected warning lands on the floor.

None of this replaces the banksman, the yellow lines, the mirrors, or the training. It sits alongside them as the last line that catches what a person inevitably misses on the hundredth hour of a shift. The configuration-driven approach matters here too: rules, zones, and schedules mapped to how your site really operates outperform generic off-the-shelf detection. Vendors across the AI safety-monitoring market, including Inviol, Protex AI, and Intenseye, position measurable risk reduction as the headline benefit, which is the kind of evidence an ALARP cost-benefit test wants to see.