OH consultation - Government plans released!

The OH consultation team has advised that the Government has recently released two OH consultations.

1. DWP and DHSC Joint Work and Health Directorate’s Occupational Health: Working Better, and
2. HMT/HMRC’s Tax Incentives for Occupational Health.

Quality OH services have the potential to prevent work-related illness and avoidable sickness absence, prevent people falling out of work, support business productivity, potentially reduce pressures on the NHS, and support a reduction in economic inactivity as a result of health conditions. However, OH coverage across Great Britain is currently at 45% of workers, which is substantially lower than international comparators.

This consultation brings together employers, the healthcare sector, and local communities by seeking their views on ways to increase OH coverage, and the consultation publication can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/occupational-health-working-better

The consultation will look at ways to increase employer OH take-up to support employee health in the workplace, specifically by exploring:

• The introduction of a national ‘health at work’ standard to help provide a baseline for quality OH provision including guidance, the option of pursuing accreditation and additional Government-funded support services as well as employer best practice sharing;
• Best practice from other countries and other UK-based employer models that enable employers to provide support for their employees (Chapter 2); and
• How we develop and support a multidisciplinary workforce on work and health, including an expert OH workforce. This will build on our existing work with the OH sector and explore the opportunities this can offer businesses and providers (Chapter 3).

HMT/HMRC’s Tax Incentives for Occupational Health consultation: www.gov.uk/government/consultations/joint-hmt-hmrc-consultation-on-tax-incentives-for-occupational-health will explore the case for providing additional tax relief to businesses when they invest in OH services. It focuses on the effectiveness of expanding the scope of the existing Benefit-in-Kind reliefs for OH provision, as well as seeking views on the merits of other changes that the government could make via the tax system to incentivise firms to invest in occupational health.

If you have any further questions, please contact the OH Consultation inbox: oh.consultation@dwp.gov.uk

ACPOHE and the CSP will be responding to these consultations but we encourage all our members to do so also!