Almost 6,000 council workers reported assaults and abuse in last three years

Almost 6,000 council workers have reported assaults and abuse in the last three years across Greater Manchester.

Recent data found that abusive incidents are becoming a more regular occurrence, with 2,062 happening in the year ending March 2025. This is a 17 per cent increase on the 1,832 cases reported by employees and contractors in 2022/23.

The total number of incidents stands at 5,963 across all Greater Manchester councils between March 2022 and March 2025.

The worst affected area is Rochdale, with 1,931 assaults reported between 2022 and 2025.

Rochdale council highlighted that a large proportion of the incidents reported resulted in no injuries. An example given was that 10.71 pc of the incidents reported in 2024/25 saw no injuries sustained.

Tameside council workers were the second most-impacted, with 1,169 assaults reported in the same time period. A spokesperson for Tameside council explained the reason for their high numbers could be due to a number of frontline services being delivered in-house, rather than contracted out. 

Tameside council say they have a number of measures in place to protect workers, including training in personal safety; risk assessments; reviews of reported incidents; support and counselling services; and protective clothing for staff.

Council staff members most impacted in this dataset are teachers at schools still under authority control – rather than in education trusts. Nine out of every ten attacks were on teaching staff, as 682 injuries ranging from bruises to concussion and puncture wounds were reported, according to research from workplace injury claim specialists Legal Expert.

But other teams in the council, including customer services, admin and managerial staff, also told the authority that they’d suffered a physical or verbal attack.

Manchester City Council’s report showed that staff were subjected to 15 racial attacks. Employees impacted by them included a communications officer, five social workers and a homelessness officer. There were also sexual assaults against a member of library staff and five other employees.

According to Freedom of Information requests submitted by Legal Expert, Nine out of 10 Greater Manchester councils said that they’d seen more than 130 assault or abuse cases.

Bury Borough Council was the one exception, having recorded just 11 between 2022 and 2024. But the authority added that it had already noted seven cases in just the first three months of 2025.

The ten councils said that workers suffered 10,874 injuries, either through deliberate or non-deliberate incidents, between April 2022 and March this year.

How many assaults on council workers were reported in each local authority across Greater Manchester between 2022 and 2025:

• Rochdale: 1,931
• Tameside: 1,169
• Bolton: 746
• Manchester: 675
• Trafford: 424
• Wigan: 367
• Stockport: 356
• Oldham: 149
• Salford: 135
• Bury: 11

A spokesperson for Rochdale Borough Council said: “Council staff work extremely hard to deliver services under difficult circumstances and their safety and wellbeing is our highest priority. These figures underline the challenges faced by staff who deliver services for residents.

“We take any form of abuse or assault against staff extremely seriously, with robust policies and measures in place to protect staff and encourage them to report any incidents. 

“Abuse of any kind is completely unacceptable and our employees should always be treated with respect, enabling them to carry out their roles safely and with confidence.”

A Tameside council spokesperson said: “Our staff work hard to provide services and support for everyone in our community and it is completely unacceptable for them to face any kind of abuse, threats or harassment or to feel unsafe in their roles.

“Most of our residents are respectful and it is just a small minority who behave abusively. However there is no excuse for this behaviour and we do not tolerate it. We have a culture in place where we strongly encourage and support staff to report any abuse.”