STAFF should be assessed individually before they return to workplaces during the Covid-19 pandemic, the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) urged today.

The union has laid out a number of tests it wants carried out in Civil-Service workplaces to ensure that they are safe.

These would ensure that workplaces are used only for essential duties, that union health-and-safety reps have signed off risk assessments, that vulnerable workers are protected and that staff have been given individual risk assessments.

The union also wants a broad return to work to happen only once the virus is being managed effectively.

General secretary Mark Serwotka said: “These tests provide a safe route back to the workplace for our members and ensure that the government is fulfilling all its obligations to keep workers safe during the pandemic.

“Around 80 per cent of PCS members are successfully working from home and ministers should only be sending people back to workplaces when it is safe to do so.

“Safe workplaces mean less chance of a second Covid-19 spike and that is in the interests of the whole country.”