Changes afoot in Occupational Health and work benefits……?

There are increasing numbers of reports in the press, presumably coming from information given by Government, trialing changes that will be announced in the Spring Budget on 15^th March.  These include changes to make access to Occupational Health services easier for employers and alteration to benefits for those in and out of work.

The driver for these changes appears to be the increase of 500,000 in the number of economically inactive people over the last year. These people are mainly aged over 50 years and a mixture of those who have decided to retire early and those with long term illness.

Once retired less than 10% of people ever work again, so the Government approach may be to try to retain people in employment by offering better access to Occupational Health services and by making work more attractive financially.

The devil is always in the detail, but clearly lost tax receipts and increased benefit payments are triggering substantial thinking in the Department of Work and Pensions, it wants those 500,000 back in work.