A counicl worker is assaulted almost every week, according to figures released under the Freedom of Information Act.

The most common cause of injury for authority employees is falling or slipping over, followed by violent attacks, which occur with alarming regularity.

Assault by a person led to 96 injuries during the period April 2006 to September this year, which is 3.31 attacks every month, while 78 workers reported verbal abuse.

There were 666 accidents and injuries recorded overall.

The council’s joint union representative for health and safety, Su Manning, said she thought the figures were a conservative estimate as many people did not report.

“If they are the first point of contact in a reception and they reported it every time somebody got angry and abusive they would never have time to do anything else,” she said.

“Social workers are particularly vulnerable as they work in child protection and deal with abusive characters, they tend to think it’s part of the job and they have to accept it but that’s not the case.”

Ms Manning said many of the attacks were also likely to be from people who were angry about being homeless or people with mental health issues.

Work-related injuries also scored highly - 150 workers were injured by falling or slipping over on a level surface - and 95 workers were injured by lifting, carrying or handling objects at a rate of 3.27 per month.

An unlucky 58 were hit with a moving, flying or falling object, five fell from a height, four were trapped by something collapsing or overturning and 25 suffered from being exposed to fire or something hot.

Some more unusual injuries were also recorded - there were three incidents of workers being injured by animals and one incident of electrocution.

The Health and Safety Executive was called in to investigate 55 of the accidents during this time period.

The Guardian asked for details of where the incidents happened and long people were off work or hospitalised after each one but the borough said it would take too many people hours to find out this information.