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MSD burden in UK ports: what the PSS 2025 statistics show, and what they can’t

Sep 12
8 min read

Manual handling is one of the most persistent causes of injury in UK ports. The Port Industry Incident Statistics 2025 from Port Skills and Safety (PSS), published in June 2026, shows how much of the musculoskeletal disorder (MSD) burden in port work incident data captures, and how much it misses. The core dataset covers an average of 17,792 direct and indirect workers and 41.75 million hours worked across 25 contributing port members, 24 of which supplied full-year data.

The headline is a harder year. Lost time injuries (LTIs) rose from 178 to 213, injuries reportable under RIDDOR (the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations) rose by 30%, and total days lost rose by 74% to 5,271.

We read the report with a narrower question: what does it tell us about MSD risk in port work? The report does not classify MSDs directly. It records acute events by immediate cause and body part, so the analysis below uses those fields as proxies and is explicit about where they stop.


Key findings

  • Injury whilst handling, lifting or carrying caused 33 of 213 lost time injuries in UK ports in 2025 (about 15%), the third most common immediate cause.

  • Handling has ranked among the top three immediate causes in every year of PSS's annual rankings since 2018.

  • The back was the most common body part injured in lost time injuries, with 41 cases, up from 30 in 2024.

  • The only RIDDOR-reportable occupational disease recorded in 2025 was a case of carpal tunnel syndrome. Cumulative MSDs largely go unrecorded in incident data.

  • None of the five most common near-miss categories involves handling or posture, so the sector's leading indicators carry almost no signal for MSD risk.


Manual handling: a top-three cause for eight years running

Injuries whilst handling, lifting or carrying caused 33 LTIs in 2025, up from 27 in 2024. That made it the third most common immediate cause of lost-time injury, behind slips, trips and falls on the same level (51) and hitting something fixed or stationary (39).

The share is the more telling figure. Handling accounted for about 15% of LTIs in both years. The 2025 rise reflects more harm overall, not handling becoming relatively worse.

The longer view is consistent. Handling has ranked among the top three immediate causes in every year of PSS's annual rankings from 2018 to 2025. Across all incidents recorded since 2018, it accounts for 491 cases, second only to slips, trips and falls at 777.

Few hazards in the dataset are this stable. That stability is the point: manual handling is not a spike to investigate but a structural feature of port work.


Where the burden lands: the back

The back was the most common primary body part injured in LTIs in 2025, with 41 cases, up from 30. Across all reported injuries, not only LTIs, it ranked third with 143 cases.

Primary body part (LTIs)

2025

2024

Back

41

30

Shoulder

14

4

Neck

8

9

Arms

8

13

Wrist

6

4

Elbow

3

3


Not every back injury is an MSD. A fall can injure the back as readily as a lift, and PSS links the rise to both slips and handling. These figures show where load-related harm is likely to sit, not a count of MSDs.

The pattern matches the national picture. HSE estimates 511,000 workers in Great Britain had a work-related MSD in 2024/25, with 7.1 million working days lost. Back disorders made up 43% of those cases. Over 2022/23 to 2024/25, transportation and storage, the industry group that includes port operations, had one of the highest MSD rates of any sector: 1,800 per 100,000 workers against an all-industry average of 1,180.


One reportable disease, and what it signals

The only RIDDOR-reportable occupational disease in the 2025 core dataset was a case of carpal tunnel syndrome. One case among almost 18,000 workers is not evidence that the MSD burden is low.

Cumulative MSDs rarely produce an incident to report. They develop over months of repeated loading, and RIDDOR's reportable diseases include only a few hand and forearm conditions. Carpal tunnel syndrome, for example, is reportable only where work involves regular use of hand-held vibrating or percussive tools, and no back condition is on the list. A gradual-onset back problem enters RIDDOR only if an accident causes more than seven days' incapacity. Otherwise it surfaces, if at all, as sickness absence outside incident datasets.

The handling LTIs above are therefore a floor. They capture the acute end of a problem that is largely cumulative.


Why near-miss and observation data miss MSD risk

Contributing members recorded 1,333 near misses in 2025. The five most common potential causes were driving-related events, being hit by a moving or falling object, hitting something fixed, slips and trips, and contact with moving machinery. None involves handling or posture.

That is expected. Near-miss reporting captures events that almost happened. Cumulative loading has no near-miss moment; the risk builds lift by lift.

Health and safety observations can catch poor technique, but they are intermittent and depend on who is watching. Members recorded 13,664 observations in 2025, about 0.06 per worker, and safe or positive observations fell by 42%.

The result is a cause of harm that has been persistent for eight years with almost no leading signal in the sector dataset. Even the guidance classifications point the same way: the occupational health and fitness for work Safety in Ports documents (SiP011 and SiP017) were linked to 10 incidents between them, against 61 for workplace transport alone.

PSS is already moving in this direction. The report notes that immediate causes do not identify root causes, and that handling incidents may reflect load characteristics, work organisation or equipment availability. Causal factor fields are being added to the 2026 data collection, and potential severity reporting began in 2025. Manual handling is named among the sector's priorities for the year ahead.


Where the data stops, and where to look

The report records LTIs by location. In 2025 the top four were berth/quay alongside vessel (45, up from 27), open storage areas (36, up from 10), container ships (26, down from 29) and marine afloat (16, up from 9). These totals cover all causes combined.

The report does not link locations to immediate causes, and it does not record the task being performed. It cannot show where handling injuries specifically occur.


What follows draws on SpatialCortex's own manual handling assessments in port and maritime operations, not on the PSS report. In that work, MSD risk tends to concentrate in a small number of recurring tasks:

  • Lifting gear at berths and docks. Chains, slings, spreader bars and twist locks, often handled overhead or in awkward postures, loading the spine and upper limbs.

  • Mooring operations. Heavy ropes and wires that strain the back, shoulders and arms.

  • Container securing. Twist locks and lashing bars, with bending and reaching in tight spaces.

  • Warehouses and transit sheds. Rapid, repeated lifting and stacking, and pushing trolleys in tight spaces with trunk rotation, much as in warehousing and logistics.

These are tasks where exposure accumulates shift after shift, which is why task-level data tells a port more than location totals alone.


Reading the numbers carefully

The direction of change depends on the denominator. Handling LTIs per 100 workers rose by about 42%, from 0.13 to 0.19, but per million hours worked they rose by about 9%, from 0.73 to 0.79. Reported hours rose while headcount fell, and indirect workers dropped from 6,460 to 2,301. For that reason we lean on counts and shares rather than rates.

The days-lost increase is not broken down by cause, so it cannot be attributed to MSDs from this data. PSS also advises caution when comparing across years and with other sources, given differences in categories and collection methods between ports.


How SpatialCortex approaches this

If the injury data can only show handling risk after harm, the gap to close is a measure of load before harm. That is what MOVA, our workwear-integrated wearable sensor system, is built to provide.

Our approach follows four steps:

  • Assess by role. Workers wear MOVA through real tasks across a working shift, as part of a structured periodic assessment of each role.

  • Find the high-load tasks. Objective biomechanical data shows which tasks, postures and movements carry the greatest cumulative load, scored against HSE tools such as the Manual Handling Assessment Charts (MAC), Risk Assessment of Pushing and Pulling (RAPP) and Assessment of Repetitive Tasks (ART) where a task fits them.

  • Target the controls. Health and safety teams use the findings to prioritise changes through the hierarchy of controls, from engineering and task redesign to administrative measures, rather than relying on training alone.

  • Re-measure. Repeating the assessment after a change shows whether load has actually reduced, before the injury record has time to.

Some port tasks do not fit those tools. Mooring, for example, combines lifting, dragging and repetitive hauling, so MAC, RAPP and ART each cover only part of it. Where a task falls outside them, MOVA can still assess it against the underlying MSD risk factors: torso bending and leaning, horizontal and vertical reach, and repetition.


This gives ports a leading indicator for a hazard that currently has none in the sector dataset. It also complements the direction PSS has set: causal factors and potential severity explain incidents better, and role-level load data explains the exposure behind them.

Because MOVA is wearable rather than camera-based, it does not film operational areas where contractors, visitors and members of the public move. For a port, that means finding which tasks at the berth, in the container yard or in the transit shed are building risk before the next lost-time injury is recorded.


To see where MSD risk sits in your operation, visit our ports and maritime page or get in touch with the SpatialCortex team.


What this means for UK ports

The PSS 2025 statistics show manual handling as one of the most persistent causes of lost-time injury in UK ports, with the back carrying the largest share of harm. They also show the limits of incident data for a hazard that builds over time.

The sector has the data, guidance and collaborative structures to respond, as PSS notes. Adding objective measures of physical load to that picture is how handling risk moves from something counted after the event to something managed before it.


Sources



What are the most common causes of lost time injuries in UK ports?

In the PSS 2025 statistics, the three most common immediate causes of lost time injuries were slips, trips and falls on the same level (51), hitting something fixed or stationary (39), and injury whilst handling, lifting or carrying (33).


How many workers in Great Britain have a work-related MSD?

HSE estimates that 511,000 workers had a work-related musculoskeletal disorder in 2024/25, with 7.1 million working days lost. Back disorders accounted for 43% of cases.


Are musculoskeletal disorders reportable under RIDDOR?

Only a few are. RIDDOR's reportable occupational diseases include carpal tunnel syndrome (where work involves regular use of hand-held vibrating or percussive tools), cramp of the hand or forearm, hand-arm vibration syndrome, and tendonitis or tenosynovitis of the hand or forearm. Back conditions are not on the list; a back injury becomes reportable only when it results from an accident, for example one causing more than seven days' incapacity.


How can ports measure MSD risk before injuries occur?

By assessing physical load during real tasks, role by role. Objective biomechanical data can be scored against HSE tools such as MAC, RAPP and ART, or against the underlying risk factors where a task does not fit those tools, and repeated after a change to confirm that load has reduced.


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