The 2025 Incident Data Report recorded 669 incidents in the UK, a 2% increase on 2024, alongside a 7% rise in hours worked to over eight million.  

I can say with confidence that the increase in hours worked reflects a busier and growing industry. There has been continued expansion of onshore wind operations as well as a rise in construction activities following the reversal on the ban of constructing new wind farms in England.  

It is safe to assume that the general market growth and demand is what is causing the increasing activity across the industry. Half of our members have seen an increase in total hours worked in 2025 compared to 2024, while the other half has reported a drop in hours. This doesn’t imply that growth is stagnant, as there has been an overall increase in hours worked by over half a million hours; rather, it can be inferred that a lot of sites could potentially be moving from one phase to another, for example from development to construction or construction to operation.  

The key takeaway is that the industry is carrying out significantly more work than before, yet incident numbers have increased at a much slower rate, resulting in lower incident rates relative to activity.

Something new this year is that it includes Irish data; the report tracked 32 incidents across 1.36 million operational hours. This inclusion is an important milestone because it expands the geographic scope of the dataset and provides a broader view of health and safety performance in the onshore wind sector. However, this data covers only a very narrow range of the wider Irish onshore wind industry so is not entirely representative of the Irish industry. For the same reason, caution is needed when comparing Ireland and the UK at this stage.  

For the UK, the report noted that the Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR) rose from 0.30 to 0.58 and the Lost Time Incident Frequency (LTIF) from 0.09 to 0.31. Total Recordable Incident Rate, which is the total number of recordable incidents per 100,000 hours, includes incidents that resulted in a medical treatment injury, restricted workday, lost workday or fatality. Lost Time Injury Frequency is the number of lost workdays and fatality per 100,000 hours. Medical treatment injuries and restricted workdays have remained more or less the same compared to last year, and there have been no fatalities for the last couple of years.  

It is the change in lost workdays that is influencing the TRIR and LTIF, as there has been a jump from seven lost work days in 2024, to 25 in 2025. This suggests that while fewer incidents occurred compared to hours worked, those that did were relatively more severe.

Looking more closely helps explain what is driving this increase. For 2025, routine maintenance was split into planned maintenance and fault response. But it was the former that was the biggest driver of incidents, accounting for 119 incidents overall and 38 incidents that resulted in injury. Although manual handling was tenth on the total incident list, it was the second-largest contributor to injury followed by access and egress, climbing and rope access, and walking around site.

The overall incident profile remains broadly similar, with hand injuries continuing to be the most common injury for the sixth consecutive year. In 2025, there were 36 hand injuries, a 20% increase from the previous year, accounting for almost a third of all injury incidents. Back injuries also increased from 16 to 19, while leg and head injuries both saw smaller rises.  

These kinds of injuries highlight the need for good lifting techniques, safe movement around site and effective use of tools and PPE. SafetyOn has already responded by launching a manual handling campaign with G+ during 2025 to help address this trend.

Incidents relating to working with electrical systems had been considerable over the last several years, and last year SafetyOn hosted a ‘Safe by Design’ workshop on electrical safety. So it was a huge positive to see that the number of electrical incidents has dropped in 2025. While we cannot fully claim direct causation, we can suggest that these collaborative initiatives may be contributing to improvements in specific risk areas.

Turning to the location where injuries are happening, the turbine continues to be the highest-risk location. Around two-thirds of all injuries occurred within the turbine itself, and within that the tower saw the highest number, followed closely by the nacelle. These are the locations in the wind farms where the majority of the heavy work occurs, hence resulting in a higher number of incidents and/or injuries.  

A significant proportion of high-potential incidents involved fallen or dropped objects, representing more than half (61) of the 113 so classified. Most occurred during routine maintenance and access and egress, highlighting that everyday tasks can still present significant risks if controls are not consistently applied.

Despite the increase in severity indicators, the report also highlights some encouraging improvements. Driving incidents reduced by 58%; the number of access and egress incidents was reduced; and the severity of incidents in maintenance-related work improved, with a lower proportion of maintenance incidents being classed as high potential than in 2024.  

More worrying was a significant increase in security-related incidents, which indicates shifting areas of operational risk as the sector evolves.  

Security was one of the most significant emerging themes across 2025. Security-related risks are essentially incidents or events that are relating to unauthorised access into wind farms and turbines. This may include vandalism, theft or damage to assets. This was monitored throughout the year, and by the end of 2025 they had more than doubled from 38 in 2024 to 92 in 2025. More importantly, 26 of those incidents were classified as high potential, meaning they had the capacity to result in serious injury or worse.  

Many incidents involved individuals attempting to gain access to turbine towers to remove high voltage cables, while other cases involved the theft of tools, fuel and machinery. In doing so, they risk exposing themselves to potentially fatal hazards. At the same time, there is also risk to wind farm personnel responding to security incidents or already working on sites. On the other hand, it is important to add that none of these incidents resulted in injuries to personnel during 2025.  

To address this growing challenge, SafetyOn is working with RenewableUK and the National Infrastructure Crime Reduction Partnership by better understanding emerging threats and identifying practical mitigation measures. There are also plans for a dedicated Safety by Design workshop focused on security, bringing together industry stakeholders to review current practices and develop recommendations to reduce both the likelihood and impact of security related incidents.

To finish off, I’d like to point out that the increases we are seeing in TRIR and LTIF metrics are actually a return to typical levels following a record low year for incidents in 2024.  

SafetyOn and the wider industry have set 2024 as the direction towards which the industry should progress and continue beyond that in terms of improving health and safety. However, it is difficult to pinpoint a specific cultural shift or operational change that explains why 2024 performed so strongly.  

What the data shows is that the risk profile changed in 2025. Security incidents increased by almost four-fold, lost work day injuries rose, emergency response cases increased, and there was a notable rise in incidents occurring within turbine towers which were directly related to the security incidents. Construction activity also contributed a greater share of incidents than in previous years, which is to be considered natural since the ban on onshore wind construction has been lifted.  

• Further reading: Safety in word and deed: Darren Taylor on psychological safety and operational excellence in onshore wind. Darren Taylor, Head of Onshore Operations UK & Ireland at Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy and Chair of SafetyOn, speaks about human factors, leadership and building a safer, more open onshore wind industry.   

• Ensuring health and safety keeps pace with growth of the onshore wind sector. Emma McIvor AMEI, Technical Manager at SafetyOn, gives an update on the sector and the centrality of safe operations for the industry.