Since October 2024, employers have been under a legal duty to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment of their employees. From 30 October 2026, that standard rises to taking all reasonable steps. Acas confirms that from the same date, employers will be liable for harassment of their workers by third parties, such as customers or clients, unless they have taken all reasonable steps to prevent it.

On 2 October 2018, Mick Ferris, a 53-year-old coach driver, was returning to his coach after a break when a window unit fell from a penthouse at the Corniche development on Albert Embankment. The window weighed 130kg and fell around 300 feet. He was killed instantly.

On 15 December 2023, Grace Mecaley was walking home from shopping on Walthamstow High Street. At around 5pm she was crossing the road at an authorised pedestrian crossing at the bus station. She was about two-thirds of the way across when a number 212 bus came round the corner and struck her. She died at the scene.

If your harassment policy is a document that sits in a folder nobody opens until there's a complaint, you have a problem — and from 30 October 2026, it becomes a bigger one.

Ask most office managers what “welfare facilities” means under health and safety law, and you'll get a blank look. It sounds like something for building sites and factory floors — hard hats, Portaloo’s, site cabins. It isn't. The Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 apply to every workplace in Great Britain, offices included, and a prosecution this July was a reminder of what happens when basic provision is ignored for long enough.

Fire Door Safety Week runs 21–25 September, and if you manage an office, this is one awareness week actually worth five minutes of your time — because fire doors are, in my experience auditing SME premises, the single most consistently neglected part of a fire risk assessment.

Why the most expensive incidents are usually the ones that were sitting on a register, waiting.

Mykhalio Hustei was 35 years old. He worked as a labourer on a construction site in Bovingdon, Hertfordshire, building flats for a family-run property development business. He also lived there — in a property adjoining the site. On the night of 22 October 2021, he went out with friends. On the way back to his flat, he walked across the construction site and fell into one of the open excavation holes. The hole was filled with rainwater. His body was found at around 2pm the following day. He drowned.

In May 2026, HSE did something it has never done before. It published COSHH guidance specifically for engineered stone fabrication — guidance that makes one thing absolutely clear: dry cutting of engineered stone is unacceptable. Not inadvisable. Not discouraged. Unacceptable. At the same time, it launched a programme of over 1,000 inspections of stone fabricators across Great Britain, and those inspections are already underway.

On 22 May 2026, Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy Ltd was fined £600,000 at Grimsby Magistrates' Court after one of its employees was left permanently paralysed from the waist down at the company's wind turbine blade manufacturing facility in Hull. The employee, a 37-year-old woman, was left paraplegic when an 800kg pre-cast blade structure collapsed on her while she and a colleague were preparing it for the next stage of construction. She had worked for the company. She was left unable to walk. And it was entirely preventable.

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Proposed Changes to the Control of Asbestos Regulations: What You Need to Know

HSE's Mental Health Push in 2026: What Employers Must Do Now

April is Stress Awareness Month - a vital opportunity for employers to address one of the most pressing challenges in today’s workplace: preventing work-related stress.

Why these cases matter