Proposals for a new Health & Work Advisory and Assessment Service

In January 2013, the DWP published Fitness for Work: the Government response to Health at Work: an independent review of sickness absence. One of the proposals is to set up a new Health & Work Advisory and Assessment Service, from Spring 2014. If implemented, the new Service promises (among other things) state-funded occupational health testing for employees who are off sick for more than four weeks.

Campaigners have responded that the government’s sickness absence review would have been more useful had its focus been on preventing occupational ill-health and injury in the first place. There are particular concerns about forcing people back to work prematurely, and self-evident risks from outsourcing responsibility for publicly-funded occupational health checks to a private provider.