COVID-19 - Safety, Health And Environment Regulatory: Public Health England Issues Industry Action Cards To Manage COVID-19 Outbreaks ' Do They Apply To Your Business?

• Published date: 06 August 2020
• Subject Matter: Employment and HR, Food, Drugs, Healthcare, Life Sciences, Coronavirus (COVID-19), Health & Safety, Employment and Workforce Wellbeing
• Law Firm: Clyde & Co
• Author: Mr Chris Morrison, Rod Hunt, Mark Brookes and Nathan Buckley

Public Health England (PHE) has recently issued workplace action cards to certain business sectors setting out various key steps to quickly identify and contain any potential COVID-19 outbreak, to include contacting the local PHE Health Protection Team for help and advice. If not managed properly, an intervention by PHE could also potentially lead to the involvement of the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) or local authority and, in a worst case scenario, morph into a formal criminal investigation.

With businesses' COVID-19 policies and arrangements coming under scrutiny from all quarters as never before, the legal, commercial and PR risks for any business are significant.

In this update, we consider the latest PHE action cards, which business sectors it applies to, and how we can help protect your position.

Identify, report, respond

The action cards have been developed to cover a range of businesses and organisations.

The cards only apply to England and additional settings will be added in due course.

These quick-reference guides provide key steps to help businesses to:

• Identify an outbreak of COVID-19 (one or more confirmed case or more than one confirmed case, depending on the business or organisation)
• Report the outbreak to the local PHE Health Protection Team The guidance states that "early engagement with your local PHE HPT is key to minimise any possible wider outbreak in your community"
• Work with the local Health Protection Team to respond

The workplace action cards specifically cover¹:

• Construction and outdoor work
• Manufacturing of food and other large processing plants
• Restaurants, pubs, bars, cafes or takeaways
• Shops and branches
• Dress fitters, tailors and fashion designers
• Hairdressing, barbershops, beauty and nail bars, makeup, and tattoo and spray tanning studios
• Spas, sports and massage therapy, wellbeing and holistic centres

In the event of an outbreak, the local PHE Health Protection Team may request further information, including whether other regulators (such as the HSE or local authority) have been in contact.

They may also request certain actions to be put in place, such as:

• Enhanced hygiene, hand washing and cleaning regimes, and use of personal protective equipment
• Enhanced testing and tracing
• Increased staff awareness of and adherence to preventative measures
• Additional measures to limit access or temporary closure of the site/unit

Spot inspections

We have seen PHE visits to our clients swiftly followed by subsequent HSE...