Ban on pre-employment health checks

Section 60 of the Equality Act 2010 introduced a ban on asking pre-employment questions to job applicants about their health, including whether they have a disability and their previous sickness absence record, before they are offered a role.

There are exceptions. In particular:

• asking about disability before an interview to organise reasonable adjustments at the interview is allowed;

• asking whether an applicant will be able to carry out a function intrinsic to the role (once reasonable adjustments have been made) is allowed; and

• anonymised questions for diversity monitoring are allowed, although the results should not be available to the person doing the selecting.

In general, this means that an employer must not ask about a job applicant’s health before offering employment, on either a conditional or an unconditional basis. The ban extends to third parties such as assessment centres, recruitment agencies and referees.

Once a job offer has been made, it ceases to be unlawful to ask questions about health. However, if an employer asks questions about health after making the offer, for example through a health questionnaire, and then withdraws the offer because the answers reveal the existence of a disability, this will be disability discrimination.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission is responsible for enforcement. (See Chapter 6: Discrimination).