With thanks to Port Skills and Safety. This page summarises PSS's annual benchmarking report for port H&S teams, which PSS publishes free on its website. The figures, and the work of collecting them from members, are PSS's. Read the full PSS report. Any errors in our summary are ours, and we will correct them if told.
Ports do not have their own line in HSE's national statistics; they sit inside "transportation and storage", the sector with a fatal injury rate 2.2 times the all-industry average. The best port-specific figures in the UK come from the industry itself. Port Skills and Safety, the sector's skills and safety body, collects monthly incident returns from its members and publishes an annual benchmarking report. This page sets out what the 2025 report says, with the 2024 figures beside it, quoted as published.
PSS's 2025 dataset covers 25 contributing members, an average workforce of 17,792 direct and indirect employees, and 41.75 million hours worked.
| Measure | 2025 | 2024 |
|---|---|---|
| Fatalities (contributing members) | 1 | 0 |
| Lost-time injuries (LTIs) | 213 | 178 |
| LTI incidence rate per 100 workers | 1.19 | 0.86 |
| LTI frequency rate per million hours (LTIFR) | 5.10 | 4.78 |
| Total injury rate per million hours (TIR) | 7.21 | 7.44 |
| Days lost to LTIs | 5,271 | 3,021 |
| RIDDOR-reportable injuries | 137 | 105 |
| of which specified injuries | 32 | 26 |
| of which over-seven-day injuries | 104 | 78 |
| RIDDOR incidence rate per 100 workers | 0.73 | 0.51 |
| High-potential incidents | 130 | 68 |
| Near misses recorded | 1,333 | 1,301 |
| of which high potential | 303 | 328 |
Source: PSS, Port Industry H&S Benchmarking Statistics for 2025, headline summary and Tables 2–4; 2024 report for prior-year figures. The 2025 RIDDOR total of 137 includes eight incidents from 13 members' supplementary returns; the main monthly dataset shows 129.
The one fatality in 2025 involved a port worker and mobile plant. PSS also records 13 incidents in 2025 whose potential outcome was a fatality but whose actual outcome was less severe. In 2024, contributing members reported no fatalities, but PSS noted two deaths in the wider UK port sector that year: a crew member during the loading of freight vehicles onto a ro-ro vessel, and a port worker after a water-related incident.
Over the longer run, better. PSS's lost-time injury frequency rate has fallen from 8.28 per million hours in 2020 to 5.10 in 2025, and the report describes a year-on-year reduction since 2019 with one exception (2022).
| Year | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LTIFR per million hours | 8.28 | 6.38 | 7.36 | 5.41 | 4.78 | 5.10 |
Source: PSS, 2025 report, Table 4 (combined direct and indirect employees).
2025 is the first rise since 2022: LTIs up 20%, RIDDOR injuries up 30%, days lost up 74%, and high-potential incidents nearly doubled. PSS is careful about what that means. More high-potential and near-miss reporting can reflect better reporting rather than more danger, and the report says so; the rise in actual injuries and days lost is harder to read that way. Its own conclusion is that the increases "show that there is no room" for complacency.
The same things that cause them everywhere else, with one port-specific addition.
| Immediate cause of lost-time injury | 2025 | 2024 |
|---|---|---|
| Slipped, tripped or fell on same level | 51 | 36 |
| Hit something fixed or stationary | 39 | 6 |
| Injured while handling, lifting or carrying | 33 | 27 |
| Hit by moving, flying or falling object | 26 | 27 |
| Driving related (collisions etc.) | 16 | 14 |
| Contact with sharp objects | 12 | 0 |
| Fell from height, less than 1 m | 6 | 6 |
| Fell from height, more than 1 m | 6 | 7 |
| Exposed to or contact with harmful substance | 6 | 1 |
| Hit by moving vehicle | 5 | 3 |
| Mobile plant | 4 | 0 |
| Contact with moving machinery or material | 4 | 5 |
| Mooring related | 2 | 2 |
Source: PSS, 2025 report, Table 6. PSS revised its cause categories after a September 2024 data workshop (removing "another type of accident" and adding others), which affects comparisons between years for some rows, notably "hit something fixed or stationary".
Slips, trips and falls lead, as they do in HSE's figures for transportation and storage, where they are 45% of specified injuries. Mooring is the line that only ports have.
Vehicles are further down the injury list than most people expect. Driving-related incidents, being hit by a moving vehicle, and mobile plant are three separate rows; added together they come to 25 of the 213 lost-time injuries in 2025. Mobile plant was also the cause of the year's one death.
A different list. PSS asks members to record the potential cause of each near miss. The top five in 2025:
In 2024 the list also included "potentially hit by moving vehicle" in fourth place.
Source: PSS, 2025 report, Section 1, Figure 1; 2024 report, Figure 1.
So in the injury table, vehicles are a minority cause behind slips and handling. In the near-miss table, vehicles are first. That is not a contradiction. It is the shape of workplace transport risk everywhere, seen clearly because ports happen to record both: vehicle events rarely produce the moderate injury that puts someone on the lost-time list, and frequently produce the near miss that goes on the other one, until the day they produce the fatality.
In the injury table, vehicles are a minority cause. In the near-miss table, they are first. The fatality was on the second list.
PSS itself flags the limit of the near-miss figures: some members do not report them, and others report only the most serious. 1,333 is therefore a floor, not a count.
The most frequent locations for lost-time injuries in 2025 were berth and quayside areas, container ships, and open storage areas, the last of these rising to second most common. In 2024 the top three were container ships, berth and quayside, and cargo handling equipment.
Source: PSS, 2025 and 2024 reports, Table 5.
HSE's own page on workplace transport in ports and docks lists the hazards without ranking them: movement of vehicles and plant around the dock; loading and unloading; unsecured loads; trailer coupling and uncoupling; unsegregated vehicle and pedestrian access such as ro-ro bridges and vessel ramps; reversing vehicles, including next to open quay edges; vehicle movements in cargo storage areas, vehicle parks, ships' holds and quaysides; and vehicles with limited visibility such as straddle carriers and reach stackers. Its one general statement is that "every year accidents involving transport result in people being killed or seriously injured."
The guidance it points to is the Safety in docks Approved Code of Practice (L148), HSG136 on workplace transport, and the PSS Safety in Ports guidance notes on terminal planning (SIP001) and ro-ro operations (SIP010).
As two lists that need two kinds of evidence. The injury list is well served by a port's own records: slips, handling and contact with fixed objects happen often enough that the pattern shows. The near-miss list is the one that predicts the fatality, and it is the one PSS says is inconsistently recorded, because a near miss on a quay is reported only if someone saw it, judged it worth reporting, and had time to write it down.
The question the benchmarking cannot answer for any individual port is the one that matters most: how many driving-related near misses happened on your quay last month, as opposed to how many were written up. The gap between those two numbers is where the next fatality is sitting.
213 among the 25 port members contributing full data to Port Skills and Safety, up from 178 in 2024, at a rate of 1.19 per 100 workers and 5.10 per million hours worked. These are benchmarking figures from contributing members, not a count for every UK port.
Slips, trips and falls on the same level: 51 of 213 lost-time injuries in 2025 in the PSS benchmarking data, followed by hitting something fixed or stationary (39) and handling injuries (33). In HSE's national figures for transportation and storage, slips are 45% of specified injuries.
Driving-related incidents such as collisions, the top potential cause category in PSS's 2025 near- miss data, followed by being hit by a moving or falling object. Vehicle-related events dominate the near-miss list even though they are a minority cause of lost-time injuries.
PSS's contributing members reported one fatality in 2025, involving a port worker and mobile plant, and none in 2024, though PSS noted two deaths in the wider UK port sector that year. Ports are not separately identified in HSE's national fatal injury statistics; they sit within transportation and storage, which recorded 15 worker deaths in 2024/25.
No. They come from PSS members who contribute monthly data: 25 in 2025, covering an average workforce of 17,792. PSS has said that, because not all members contribute, "we remain unable to present a complete picture of safety within the sector." Treat them as the best available benchmark, not a national total.
Port Skills and Safety publishes the annual Port Industry H&S Benchmarking Statistics on its knowledge hub at portskillsandsafety.co.uk, with the full PDF for each year.
By Hao Zheng, CEO at RoboK · Published 27 October 2026 · Last updated 1 November 2026
This piece starts from the ideas set out in How We Think About Safety.
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