Who Pays for an Asbestos Medical?

Who is responsible for paying?

For employees, the answer is clear: the employer pays. Where a worker is employed and does asbestos work that requires medical surveillance, the law places the duty to arrange and fund that surveillance on the employer, not on the individual.

The position is different for self-employed workers, who are responsible for their own medicals. The rest of this guide explains both, along with when the medical should happen, what the fee covers and the records that go with it.

The employer's duty to arrange and fund medicals

Under regulation 22 of the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012, an employer must make sure that each employee doing licensable or notifiable non-licensed work is kept under adequate medical surveillance. That means arranging the examinations and covering the cost.

This is not something an employer can pass on to the worker. The duty is theirs, and it comes as part of employing people to do hazardous work. Alongside paying for the medical, the employer also has to keep a health record for each worker under surveillance.

Does the medical have to be in working hours?

Yes. For employees, the examination should take place during normal working hours. A worker should not have to attend in their own time or be left out of pocket for travel or time off to go.

In practice, that means the employer plans the medical into the working day, much like any other health and safety requirement. For group bookings, this is often easier to arrange on a single day, sometimes on-site, so the disruption to work is kept to a minimum.

What if you are self-employed?

If you work for yourself and carry out licensable or notifiable non-licensed asbestos work, the duty falls on you. You are responsible for arranging your own medical surveillance and for meeting the cost, on the same basis as an employee doing that work.

This is an area where sole traders and subcontractors sometimes assume the rules do not apply to them. They do, where the work qualifies. Our guide on whether self-employed workers need asbestos medicals looks at this in more detail.

What should the cost include?

A medical fee should cover the examination itself and the certificate of medical examination that comes with it. When comparing providers, it is worth checking that the quote is for the correct medical for your work, and that the certificate is included rather than charged separately.

Group and on-site bookings are usually priced per person, so the cost per head can change with the number of workers. There is more on this in our guide to how much an asbestos medical costs, including what to look for when you compare quotes.

Can an employer pass the cost to the worker?

No. Where medical surveillance is a legal requirement for the work, an employer cannot pass the cost to the employee. The law does not allow employers to charge their workers for measures put in place to meet a specific health and safety requirement.

So an employee should never be asked to pay for their own asbestos medical, or to make up the time out of their own hours. The duty, and the bill, sit with the employer. The position is different only for genuinely self-employed workers, who arrange and fund their own surveillance because they are, in effect, their own employer for this purpose.

The records that go with the cost

Paying for the medical is only part of the duty. The employer also has to keep the right records, and there are two very different retention periods to be aware of:

• The health record for each worker is kept for 40 years from the date of the last entry.
• The certificate of medical examination is kept for 4 years.

The long retention period for health records is deliberate: asbestos-related conditions can take decades to appear, so the record needs to outlast the job by a long way. Workers also have the right to see their own health records.

What happens if an employer does not arrange medicals?

Medical surveillance for qualifying work is a legal duty, not a nice-to-have, and it is enforced by HSE. An employer who does not arrange it for workers who need it is in breach of the regulations, and that can lead to enforcement action.

There is a practical cost too. A worker whose medical is not in date should not carry on with the qualifying work, so a missed or lapsed medical can bring a job to a halt at the worst possible moment. Sorting it out under pressure is always harder than planning it in.

Most importantly, the duty exists to protect people's health. Skipping it leaves the workers doing the most hazardous jobs without the monitoring the law puts in place for them, which is exactly the situation the regulations are designed to prevent.

Why treating it as a cost of the work pays off

Medical surveillance is not an optional extra. For the work it applies to, it is a legal duty, and it exists to protect the health of the people doing some of the most hazardous jobs on site. Treating it as part of the cost of the work, rather than an afterthought, is the sensible approach, and it avoids a lapsed medical holding up a job later.

If you employ people who work with asbestos and want help arranging and funding their surveillance, our corporate medicals service is a good place to start, and you can ask us anything through a quick enquiry.