BLACKBURN with Darwen Council will bring its occupational health service in house.

The service promotes physical, mental and social wellbeing of workers employed by the council and is currently offered by external provider, Health Management.

Health Management initially agreed that they would be holding a Blackburn clinic however due to the relative low number of OHU referrals made in Blackburn they felt it was not financially viable and therefore the Blackburn clinic was never set up.

Currently any employees referred are triaged to establish if a phone appointment is suitable and if so this will be arranged with a nurse, alternatively a face to face appointment will be made for the next available time.

But council bosses say this can cause issues for staff seeking to access the service and so director of HR, legal and governance, David Fairclough, has approved a proposal to bring the service back in house.

The average number of referrals per month varies significantly from 5 to 24 per month, with the average being 15 per month. It would be expected that if OH was to be delivered in house the number of referrals would increase, as there would also be a number of proactive referrals.

An occupational health officer will be appointed as part of the health, safety and wellbeing team to run the service.

Mr Fairclough said: "The available budget for the OHU service has been reduced significantly in recent years as the workforce of the council has reduced.

"However the range and scale of some services still places a significant expectation on a good and consistent occupational health service provision given the council still employs over 2,000 staff.

"Despite the changes in service provision however there continues to be a high expectation of value for money and therefore ensuring that budget reductions are balanced with ensuring more effective services with the resources remaining has been at the

forefront of considerations about a future model of service."

The overall budget for the service is £50,000 per year and the approved proposals provide for the funding of this post, the supported commissioned services and related accommodation, equipment and administrative costs.