The Equality Act has been planned for a long time and you may well have heard about items such as "a ban on pre-employment medicals" in the HR press.

Concern that current legislation enables employers to discriminate against those with medical conditions during the recruitment process led to a clause being added to the Equality Bill which seeks to prevent employers asking candidates questions about their health that are unrelated to the job role.

Essentially, it means prospective employees with psychological health concerns, a disability or a complex medical condition would not be obliged to disclose their condition before an offer of employment.

Although the prospect of a ban on pre-employment medicals may be alarming, least of all to the health businesses who provide them, even if it's implemented, the Act does not mean employers are not entitled to screen for health issues.

Businesses are still entitled to screen people about health after the job offer.  New entry medicals are a hugely sensible step, as they result in clarity about the need to make any reasonable adjustments, present a justifiable business case as to why an individual could no longer be employed, or establish a baseline health status.

A baseline health status will help to decide if a reported case of common problems such as stress, or repetitive strain injury, are truly new problems or were present before employment commenced.

Late last week the Government Equality Office withdrew the timetable for implementation and their position is "currently considering how the different provisions will be commenced so that the Act is implemented in an effective and proportionate way".

Given there's currently very little clarity from the Government about which aspects of the Act may be introduced and when, we'd strongly suggest considering the potential to move from pre-employment towards new entry medical assessment in the next few months, as the legislation may well be implemented at relatively short notice.

We're happy to be providing both pre-employment and new-entry medicals at the moment and will refine services further after the law becomes clear, so please don't hesitate to contact us if  you'd like any further information.

It's also important to reflect that we're not employment of equalities lawyers, so please do seek specialist advice if appropriate.