Cornwall helps design Britain’s first Workplace Health System

A bad back that never gets looked at. A few weeks off with stress that quietly turns into a year. For thousands of people in Cornwall, a health problem at work ends with no job to go back to. A new national system, partly being shaped in the county, is designed to catch those problems much earlier.

Cornwall among the Vanguards

Cornwall is one of more than 200 Vanguard organisations helping to build Britain’s first Workplace Health System. The idea is to bring employers, the NHS, local leaders and support services together, so that people with health conditions get help early and don’t fall out of work when they don’t need to.

Local employers, health providers and disabled people in Cornwall are all involved in designing it. Cornwall Council has been part of the effort, working alongside employers and providers across the county.

The work sits under the Keep Britain Working programme, which is led by former John Lewis boss Sir Charlie Mayfield. He has just published a report, A National Growth Opportunity, setting out how tackling worklessness could be one of the UK’s biggest opportunities for growth.

The scale of the problem in Cornwall

Across Britain, 2.8 million people of working age are economically inactive because of ill health or disability. Millions more are working with health conditions, or facing barriers that limit what they can do. The programme puts the national cost of health-related economic inactivity at £212 billion.

In Cornwall, 21,800 people are off work because they are long-term sick.

Around 300,000 people with a health condition leave work every year nationally. Timing makes a huge difference. Someone who has been absent for four to six weeks has a 96% chance of returning. After a year away, fewer than half do.

What could change for Cornish businesses

An employer standard is being developed with the British Standards Institution. Alongside it, the programme is working on affordable support for smaller firms through pooled buying and insurance routes, so good workplace health support isn’t only open to big companies. With so much of Cornwall’s economy made up of small businesses, that part could matter more here than in most places.

There’s also a gap in what employers actually know. Few can currently tell how well they keep staff with health conditions in work, or whether those people are still employed six months later. A new employer data project starting this autumn aims to fix that.

Over the next year, the programme will test the employer standard and the workplace health support model with its Vanguards, including partners in Cornwall, and build up evidence on what works.

What the people behind it say

Sir Charlie, author of the Keep Britain Working Review and co-chair of the programme, said: “Britain has spent too long treating economic inactivity as a welfare problem. It is not. Instead, it’s one of the largest and most attainable growth opportunities this country has.

“We’ve had a National Health Service for almost 80 years. We’ve never had a Workplace Health System. That is why the same people keep appearing on the welfare bill, on NHS waiting lists and in the productivity figures without anyone being able to join them up. It’s also why we are missing the best moment to help people. The new Workplace Health System would change that.

“Ten months of building and testing with employers, mayors, providers, unions and disabled people have made us even clearer about what needs to change and more confident that a new system that helps to drive economic growth is within reach. The task now is to build it.”

Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden said: “Too many people fall out of work because of a health problem that could have been caught earlier, and too many employers have no way of knowing whether they are getting this right.

“This programme is working hand in hand with employers, mayors and local leaders, including in Cornwall, to change that, so that good workplace health support is not just for big companies and delivers growth across every postcode.”

The wider support already in place

The programme is part of a £3.5 billion employment support package. WorkWell, backed by £259 million, will support up to 250,000 people to stay in or return to work. Connect to Work supports 47 sick or disabled people in Cornwall with tailored help, and more than 1,000 full-time Pathways to Work advisers are already in place across Britain, including in Cornwall.

The government says further reform will be guided by the Milburn and Timms reviews, which are due to conclude later this year.

According to the programme, just one percentage point of extra participation in work amounts to 330,000 people nationally. That’s the productive capacity of a city the size of Cardiff.

📷Aerial view of Truro, the capital of Cornwall, England, UK