Hi, I have been asked by a client if they can enforce compulsory LFT testing for their employees before they return to the workplace and ongoing, say twice each week.

I have not been able to find a legal right for employers to do this, so interested in any input to my query please.

They will have countless other controls in place to reduce the risk of spread too.

What an absolute waste of time / resource and a criminal generation of even more Single Use plastic waste (new taxation coming in April!).

You have to alter their employment contract to mandate such activity, you have to define the rules as to what happens in the event of a "positive" test e.g. sent home for x days with / without pay, include provision for appeals and a determination of what happens to any adjacent staff. If you make it without pay better get ready for the tribunal cases.

This needs to be done very carefully and needs specialist employment law advice - even Charlie Mullins accepted he could not just "do" when he spouted all employees will be vaccinated (which the science is now proving to be pointless - the vaccinated can still catch and transmit Covid).

Then you have the issue that the tests are NOT infallable (false readings from orange juice etc.).

Is it really worth the aggro for something that was "at the time", totally irrelevant thereafter and a pointless intrusion upon the employees privacy?

Stick with the general bio-safety theatre of temperature checking - just as valid and much less waste.

I assume by compulsory testing the employer means that disciplinary actions will be taken against employees that refuse to be tested.  Not many employment contracts will including testing so it is down to legal advice to see if the employees current contracts can be extended to including testing. You also need a clear and fair procedure for dealing with those who refuse to have the test. Some people may have a physical or mental impairment that means that they can’t take the test. Will everybody be tested from the CEO down or just some people: how can you justify that?

Then there is how you handle the results in relation to data protection etc.- there is more information from ACAS here https://www.acas.org.uk/working-safely-coronavirus/testing-staff-for-coronavirus

Then you could add the latest "thought" in to the process under consideraion by Knowsley council that isolating staff must take the time off as sick-days (note they have waited for the double jabbed to be excluded from isolating). https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-58190763

A lesson in how to drive "presenteeism"

I am with Chris...having recently experienced the test the clinical givernance of the test was...well lets just say if I had been refused entry there would have been a significant challenge to the collection method and administration of the test...

For this legally speaking anyone who can provide eveidence that they are clinically exempt from the test doesn't need to take it...this excludes religious and philosphical beliefs...

for me mandating a test that has between 30-70% accurancy along with the privacy and clinical hygiene concerns and the potential for refusal to entry for an hourly paid worker that may be challenged legally...