Delay for stress code of practice

The Health and Safety Commission (HSC) has delayed a decision to publish an Approved Code of Practice (ACOP) on stress, following three years' consideration of the issue, including a public consultation exercise last year.

The consultation exercise, "Managing Stress at Work", examined views on how stress should be regulated under the Health and Safety at Work Act, and whether an ACOP on stress should be introduced.

Based on the responses to the discussion document and the results of a Health and Safety Executive (HSE) research programme, the HSC has concluded that work-related stress is a serious health and safety issue, and that it can be partly tackled through legislation.

However, it has decided that the lack of clear, agreed standards of management practice against which an employer's performance in managing a range of factors which cause stress could be measured, meant an ACOP would be unenforceable.

The HSE is therefore to develop standards of management practice by the autumn, when the HSC will decide whether an ACOP is necessary.

In the meantime, HSE inspectors and local authority officers will be given extra information on good practice to handle the issue in their routine work and the HSE will develop detailed guidance on stress for employers, using the findings of its research and focussing on risk assessment.

HSC chair Bill Callaghan said: "I do not want any employer to be in any doubt that the HSC is determined to see a clear reduction in the amount of illness caused or made worse by work-related stress."