Executive summary: Health and Safety Executive Annual Report and Accounts 2024 to 2025
Published 20 November 2025
Applies to England, Scotland and Wales
© Crown copyright 2025
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This is an executive summary of the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) Annual Report and Accounts 2024 to 2025, covering the period 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025.
HSE is a Crown Non-Departmental Public Body sponsored by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
Performance
What we do matters. It matters to everyone in Great Britain. We are dedicated to protecting people and places and helping everyone lead safer and healthier lives.
In our 50th year, we have continued to ensure that our organisational resources are deployed effectively, dynamically and in accordance with our strategic objectives and goals in our Business Plan for 2024 to 2025.
As a proportionate regulator we play our role in the government’s growth mission. We develop policies, being mindful of the impact on growth wherever possible, with any potential negative growth impacts mitigated or avoided.
Changing how we deliver our work
We have invested significant effort in evolving our regulatory processes and structures to ensure our focus remains on tackling higher-risk activities efficiently and effectively.
This year we have delivered significant programmes of work that build upon that positive foundation. This is helping us to evolve into a more flexible, resilient and impactful regulator, one that continues to effectively protect people and places in a changing world.
Transformation works best when there is commitment from all levels of an organisation. It has been particularly pleasing to see so many colleagues from across HSE engaged in changing how we deliver our work. We are committed to making further improvements.
During the year we have further developed our new case management system and have rolled the inspection service out to colleagues, with a further roll-out due in 2025.
Continuing to modernise the tools our people use to deliver critical work ensures that we maximise our reach, impact and productivity to achieve our mission.
Meeting our Business Plan objectives
In addition to changes to our internal structure, we delivered the majority of our Business Plan objectives and deliverables.
A significant achievement was fully establishing the Building Safety Regulator (BSR) for England. We have delivered a range of services that will improve the safety of residents in newly constructed and existing higher-risk buildings. This includes the regulatory regime for occupied higher-risk buildings, building assessment certification and delivering consistent standards within the building control profession. This is all part of our work to help create a built environment where everyone is competent and takes responsibility to ensure buildings are of high quality and people feel safe.
On 30 June the government announced the establishment of a new Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) Executive Agency, with the intention that this will take on the functions of BSR from HSE in due course.
Establishing a new regulator has been complex, challenging and rewarding. Protecting residents and making sure there is never another tragedy like Grenfell, has always been our priority.
Work to set up BSR has taken a huge amount of effort from everyone in HSE and we can be proud of our achievements in setting up a new regulator from scratch. Our work has put residents’ safety at the heart of the new regulatory regime, and we are already making buildings safer.
This year, we have also continued to deliver robust regulation of chemicals within the UK. Looking to the future, our expert scientists are working with industry partners to explore the safety implications arising from new technologies and enabling the transition to net zero. This included assessing safety cases, such as for repurposing offshore installations for carbon capture and storage. At the same time, we continue to recognise the importance of maintaining our role in regulating major hazards in existing energy industries.
As well as addressing the future, we must also continue to address issues of the past, such as the historic use of asbestos in the built environment. We have delivered a range of work focused on those most at risk and raising awareness among workers.
Our focus on reducing work-related ill health continues. In the coming year, our inspections will increasingly consider how employers are preventing psychological as well as physical ill health.
Focus on collaboration
We’re a leading voice, but it is important to recognise that we do not act alone. This year we renewed our focus on collaboration with partners in industry, wider government and other stakeholders. It included our first Prevention Summit, which brought together industry leaders to collaborate on solutions for preventing work-related health issues.
In major hazard sectors, we delivered a successful Process Safety Leadership Principles programme where we engaged with industry to collectively identify areas of improvement. It is important we build upon and leverage these relationships if we are to continue to deliver our objectives.
As we face the future, we are confident that whatever changes we face, we will draw on our values and our collective expertise. As one HSE, we will rise to the challenge.
A summary of our performance in 2024 to 2025
Our performance in 2024 to 2025 for enforcement action includes:
- completing 246 criminal prosecutions with a 96% conviction rate
- issuing over 4,400 notices including approximately 3,200 Improvement Notices and 1,200 notices prohibiting work activity placing people at risk of death or serious injury
- over £33 million awarded in fines
- completing 86% of fatal investigations within 12 months of receiving primary, against our target of 80%
Our performance against our Business Plan deliverables includes:
- delivering on 100% of the commitments or milestone achievements set out in the Business Plan for the year
- completing over 13,200 inspections, including over 7,000 inspections focusing specifically on work-related health and undertaking more than 2,700 inspections following receipt of intelligence
- ensuring the safe and sustainable use of pesticides and biocides by completing evaluations and authorisations within the required timescales for 168 biocide products and 780 plant protection products
- giving advice and guidance on health and safety throughout the year, our website was visited by 2.6 million users with 20.2 million page views and a ‘usefulness’ rating of 76%
- receiving over 3,700 freedom of information requests and responding to 91% within deadlines (against a target of 90% or greater)
- 77% of dutyholders taking action as a result of a visit, with 91% stating the outcome of the visit was proportionate to the risks identified
In terms of people working for HSE:
- 2,986 members of full-time equivalent (FTE) staff across various locations in the UK were working both at home and the office throughout the year
- sickness absence increased to 7.2 days per FTE against a target of 6.5 days per FTE
Financial performance
Total operating expenditure for HSE was £310 million. This expenditure was partly funded through income of £126 million, with the balance of funding provided by government.
We have delivered our objectives for the year, as measured by the milestones in our Business Plan, within the budget we agreed with DWP.
Our costs across the past 5 years by main categories of spend
| 2020/21 £m | 2021/22 £m | 2022/23 £m | 2023/24 £m | 2024/25 £m | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Staff costs | 157 | 170 | 170 | 192 | 200 |
| Estates and accommodation | 36 | 35 | 33 | 35 | 37 |
| IS/IT | 14 | 12 | 15 | 25 | 19 |
| Depreciation | 8 | 7 | 9 | 9 | 10 |
| Other costs | 30 | 46 | 34 | 52 | 44 |
| Total operating expenditure (per Statement of Comprehensive Net Expenditure) | 245 | 270 | 261 | 313 | 310 |
Our expenditure has increased across the 5-year period as the organisation has grown with the continuing development of BSR, and the addition of chemical regulation previously undertaken in the EU.
We have effectively managed inflationary pressures within our cost base, mainly impacting our estate where we have 2 Private Finance Initiative (PFI) contracts, both linked to inflation, with other cost savings and efficiencies.
The reduction in operating expenditure in 2024 to 2025 reflects:
- the reduced reliance on external delivery partners in the development of digital systems – except where capitalised, these costs were included in IS/IT in 2023 to 2024
- a lower charge for remeasurement of the PFI liability following RPI uplift – this is a notional charge each year which reflects the inflationary increase to each of HSE’s 2 PFI contracts
- the charge was £6.4 million in 2024 to 2025 and £17.3 million in 2023 to 2024
Staff costs have increased in line with net recruitment (our FTEs have increased by 64 across the year to deliver the new functions).
Income increased by £21 million to £126 million in 2024 to 2025. Within this, there has been a notable reduction in the costs recovered from prosecutions. This follows an investment to increase the size of our internal legal team, which has reduced the costs of external agents.