Posted By Joe Paterson Hi Martin Like yourself Im not too sure on this one,but Id have thought that the first port of call would have been a "signing off" line from the GP? As its stands the GP has stated the employee is unfit till Date X that in itself would suggest to me that the Insurance Company may well have some concerns re the employees return to duty whilst the GP Certificate is still running, Joe

Posted By john fitzgibbon I was surprised to read that a risk assessment had been carried out in a matter of fitness for work. Surely this matter should be left to qualified medical/occupational health practitioners. I do not beleive this should be a H&S issue, wait the 2 days and leave risk assessments for real hazards.

Posted By Alan Hoskins I stand to be corrected, but I thought there was no legal requirement for a doctor to 'sign off' someone at the end of an illness, though in practice they regularly do. Alan

Posted By Janette Draper An interesting topic and always one that encourages a debate. I cover a number of manufacturing units and we have a different slant on this. As you well know, "doctors notes" can be like "pay as you go" - whether you are really sick or not (not that I am questioning the collarbone you understand) and so we send all our people (and agency) to our company doc who is familiar with the operations that we do and what is expected of our people in the differing facets of the organisation. He determines whether they are fit for work – part of this assessment is a walk down of the area and task, a RA conducted with the line Manager and the usual “doctor / physical” stuff (a note to the guy above who said leave RA for the real hazards – a return to task RA is seen as best practice and should be done for all personnel returning to work if they have had an injury). If it is determined that the person is fit for work, but he refuses to come back because he is continuing to get “signed off” by his GP, we don’t pay any industrial sick pay and he could be seen as being awol…. But getting back to the point – Martin, if you don’t have a company doctor I would suggest that you accept the two day remainder of the sick note, keep your RA and when the chap comes in, go through the RA with him for comment and have him sign onto it.

Posted By Martin Taylor Thanks to all the respondants on this one. I am sure that I have seen postings previously that clarify the real purpose of the GP note - something to do with statutary sick pay allowance rather than whether physically fit for work If anybody can point me to these previous postings I will be eternally grateful - bit over the top granted but I really am that sad... Martin

Posted By charmaine hi there, as far as i have always known an employer is not allowed any employee back unless they are sighned back to work by gp if days are still remaining on the sick note. Once sick note has run out it is then up to the buissness to decide if the employee returns cos sick note has ended or wether they want a note to say that they are fit to return. If an employee returns to work with days still on sick note they can be done for fraud as they will still be paid ssp as well as wages earned. hope this helps