UK employers will have to carefully balance workplace health and safety risks, particularly for vulnerable staff, as the country’s approach to managing Covid-19 changes, employment law and workplace health and safety experts have warned.
England’s remaining Covid-related legal restrictions will end on Friday, 24 February, as part of plans to “live with and manage” the risk of Covid-19, prime minister Boris Johnson has announced. This includes the legal requirement to self-isolate following a positive test or as an unvaccinated close contact of a positive case; additional local authority powers to tackle local outbreaks; routine contact tracing; and the 500 self-isolation support payment.
From 1 April, the government will no longer offer free community Covid-19 testing, including both symptomatic PCR tests and asymptomatic rapid lateral flow tests. Free testing will instead be targeted to symptomatic cases in “a small number of at-risk groups”, according to the prime minister. The requirement that employers explicitly consider Covid-19 in their health and safety risk assessments will end on the same date.
Enhanced statutory sick pay will end on 24 March across the UK.
Although Covid-specific rules around testing, self-isolation and mask-wearing will differ throughout the UK, the health and safety risks posed to employees by Covid-19 are essentially the same everywhere
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