How many UK employers actually provide health and safety training, how much do they spend on training overall, and how much of the workforce it reaches are all measured — chiefly by the Department for Education’s Employer Skills Survey, with the DWP Employer Survey and the Scottish Government’s own skills survey filling in the picture. This page pulls those numbers into one citable reference on health and safety training as a product category: provision rates, total and per-head training spend, e-learning uptake and workforce coverage. It deliberately stays on training provision rather than injury or ill-health counts, and every figure carries its data period and named source.

Key facts and figures

  • 74% of employers that trained in the previous 12 months provided health and safety or first aid training in 2024, up from 71% in 2022.
  • 85% of training employers provided job-specific training, the most common type.
  • 59% of UK employers provided any training in the previous 12 months in 2024, down from 60% in 2022.
  • 70% of training employers funded or arranged online training or e-learning, up from 67% in 2022 and 51% in 2017.
  • 19.6 million staff received training over the year — 63% of the workforce, up from 18.2 million (60%) in 2022.
  • £53.0 billion was the total UK employer training spend, down 10.2% in real terms from £59.0bn in 2022 — the lowest since the series began in 2011.
  • £2,710 was spent per person trained, down from £3,250 in 2022; spend per employee fell to £1,700 from £1,960.
  • 70% of GB employers provide health and safety training or guidance to prevent ill-health or improve wellbeing, down from 75% in 2022 (DWP measure).

Checked on 15 October 2026 against the Employer Skills Survey 2024 UK report, including its June 2026 corrections, and the DWP Employer Survey 2024. The surveys measure different kinds of provision and should not be treated as interchangeable.

What percentage of UK employers provide health and safety training?

In the Employer Skills Survey 2024, 74% of UK employers that had trained staff in the previous 12 months provided health and safety or first aid training. The combined category was second only to job-specific training, at 85%, and had risen from 71% in 2022. The survey does not separate health and safety from first aid in this measure.

The denominator matters: 74% is the share of employers that provided training, not the share of all businesses. Overall, 59% of UK employers provided any training in the previous 12 months, compared with 60% in 2022. These are employer survey estimates, not a count of every organisation’s legal compliance.

Training typeShare of training employers (2024)2022
Job-specific training85%84%
Health and safety or first aid training74%71%
Any training (share of all employers)59%60%
Online training / e-learning70%67%

Employer Skills Survey 2024 figures. Training-type and online figures use training employers as their base; the “any training” row uses all employers.

How much do UK employers spend on training?

UK employer training expenditure was £53.0 billion in 2024, compared with £59.0 billion in 2022 expressed in 2024 prices: a real-terms fall of 10.2%. Training averaged 5.7 days per trainee and 3.6 days per employee. The two denominators must not be confused: employees who received no training remain in the per-employee measure.

The total splits almost evenly between the two headline categories the survey tracks: £26.9 billion on off-the-job training and £26.1 billion on on-the-job training in 2024. Health and safety training sits inside this envelope rather than being costed out separately, so the spend total is best read as the overall budget from which health and safety, job-specific and other training is funded.

At 2024 prices, expenditure per person trained fell from £3,250 in 2022 to £2,710 in 2024. Expenditure per employee fell from £1,960 to £1,700. These cover training overall, not health and safety courses alone.

How many workers receive workplace training each year?

19.6 million members of staff received training over the previous 12 months in 2024, up from 18.2 million in 2022, according to the DfE Employer Skills Survey 2024. That is equivalent to 63% of the workforce, up from 60% two years earlier — so despite the fall in total spend, the reach of training grew. It is the combination of these two trends that produces the lower per-trainee spend noted above: more people trained, from a smaller real-terms pot.

Scotland’s Employer Skills Survey 2024 reported 1.5 million employees trained, equivalent to 60% of the workforce, and £4.4 billion in employer training expenditure. Some 75% of Scottish training employers provided health and safety or first aid training. The UK-wide 74% measure also combines these two subjects.

How much health and safety training is now delivered online?

In 2024, 70% of training employers funded or arranged online training or e-learning, compared with 67% in 2022 and 51% in 2017. This measures whether employers used the method, not the proportion of courses or training hours delivered online. It covers all subjects.

That trajectory matters for health and safety specifically, because it is one of the training types most suited to standardised, repeatable online delivery — induction and refresher training on core duties can be rolled out consistently across a workforce and evidenced with certificates. It is also the model this site is built on: short, accredited, online courses such as our risk assessment training that an employer can assign to a whole team. The survey does not break e-learning down by subject, so we present the 70% as the overall online-delivery figure rather than a health-and-safety-specific one.

In Great Britain, regulation 13 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 requires adequate employee health and safety training on recruitment and exposure to new or increased risks. It must be repeated periodically where appropriate, adapted to changed risks and provided during working hours. Northern Ireland has separate equivalent legislation.

The regulation sits under the general duty in section 2 of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 to provide such information, instruction, training and supervision as is necessary to ensure health and safety at work. The HSE’s own plain-English summary, Health and safety training: a brief guide (INDG345), sets out how to identify training needs and who needs it. This legal backdrop is the reason health and safety consistently ranks as one of the most widely provided training types in the survey data — it is, for most employers, not optional. For the practical detail of who is competent to deliver and act on training, see our guide on who can carry out a risk assessment.

Where are the gaps in employer health and safety training?

The DWP Employer Survey 2024 found that 70% of employers in Great Britain provided health and safety training or guidance to prevent ill health or improve wellbeing, compared with 75% in 2022. This is a different question and population base from the Employer Skills Survey’s 74% of training employers providing health and safety or first aid training.

The same survey found that 68% of employers agreed health and safety training or guidance is effective at preventing employee ill-health, so belief in its value remains high even where provision slipped. The sharpest gap is in management training: only 21% of employers train their line managers on improving employee health and wellbeing, down from 29% in 2022. That is a meaningful shortfall, because line managers are usually the people expected to apply health and safety practice day to day. We keep the detail of the workplace ill-health those measures aim to prevent to our sibling pages — see the work-related stress statistics page for the largest single category.

Frequently asked questions

What percentage of UK employers provide health and safety training?

The Employer Skills Survey 2024 found 74% of UK training employers provided health and safety or first aid training. It is a combined category and excludes employers providing no training from that denominator. The DWP’s separate 2024 measure found 70% of GB employers provided health and safety training or guidance to prevent ill health or improve wellbeing.

How much do UK employers spend on training?

UK employers spent £53.0 billion on training in 2024, compared with £59.0 billion in 2022 at 2024 prices, a 10.2% real-terms decline. The 2024 figures were £2,710 per person trained and £1,700 per employee. These are total training costs, not health-and-safety-only expenditure.

Is health and safety training a legal requirement in the UK?

In Great Britain, regulation 13 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 requires adequate employee training on recruitment and exposure to new or increased risks. Training must be repeated where appropriate, adapted as risks change and take place during working hours. Northern Ireland has separate legislation.

How many workers receive workplace training each year?

19.6 million staff received training in the year in 2024 — 63% of the workforce — up from 18.2 million (60%) in 2022, according to the DfE Employer Skills Survey 2024. In Scotland specifically, 1.5 million employees (60% of the workforce) were trained.

How often are these statistics updated?

The figures were checked on 15 October 2026. The latest UK Employer Skills Survey findings are for 2024, with report corrections published in June 2026. This page keeps each survey’s reference period and denominator explicit rather than assuming different releases alternate on a fixed timetable.

Sources & references

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Mark McShane
Mark McShane
Health & Safety Training Specialist, Online CPD Academy

Mark writes about workplace health & safety, risk assessment and accredited online training for Risk Assessment Training, part of Online CPD Academy.