Judith Hackitt, the HSE Chair commented:

"It's really very encouraging to see a further reduction in workplace fatalities in the past year. This is performance which owes much to good practice, leadership and employee engagement. No doubt the recession has resulted in lower levels of activity in some sectors and a decrease in the numbers of new inexperienced recruits has also contributed to this fall in fatalities. She went on to add that “we should also remember that 151 families are mourning the loss of someone who last year went out to work and never came home”.

Being one of the best health and safety performers in the world means continuing to strive to drive these numbers down further - not getting complacent about what we've collectively achieved and recognising the new challenges as we emerge from the recession.

As with all health and safety statistics, today's announcement is a combination of encouraging news about improvement but also a salutary reminder of the tragedies of lives lost at work.

Despite the overall improvement, agriculture, the most dangerous industry in Britain, has recorded a sizeable increase in deaths. 38 workers died on farms in the last year, marking a disappointing return to levels of earlier years after a record low of 25 deaths in 2008/09. The fact that many of these lives have been lost in family businesses is a double tragedy. Not only have families been ripped apart, but businesses that have been handed down through generations have been ruined.

Judith continued "No industry can or should regard high levels of workplace death and injury as being 'part of the job'. It doesn't have to be this way as many other sectors have shown by their improvement."

Large falls have been recorded in some of the other historically most dangerous industries in Britain:

41 fatal injuries to construction workers were recorded - a rate of 2.0 deaths per 100,000 workers, compared to an average of 66 deaths in the past five years and a fall from the 52 deaths (and rate of 2.4) recorded in 2008/09.

42 fatal injuries to services workers were recorded, a rate of 0.2 deaths per 100,000, compared to an average of 72 deaths in the past five years and a fall from the 62 deaths (and rate of 0.3) recorded in 2008/09.

24 fatal injuries to manufacturing workers were recorded, a rate of 0.9 deaths per 100,000, compared to an average of 38 deaths in the past five years and a fall from 33 deaths (and rate of 1.1) in 2008/09.

The new figures show that compared with the latest data available for the four other leading industrial nations in Europe - Germany, France, Spain and Italy - Great Britain has, for more than the last six years, had the lowest rate of fatal injuries.