In its July 2021 response to the consultation document Health is everyone's business: proposals to reduce ill health-related job loss, the government committed to removing the statutory obstacles to the digital issuing of fit notes.
 
Currently, fit notes (often still referred to as sickness certificates) must be signed in ink by the issuing doctor, although given the significant shift to virtual GP consultations since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been increasing demand for fit notes to be provided digitally.

 

The Social Security (Medical Evidence) and Statutory Sick Pay (Medical Evidence) (Amendment) Regulations 2022 (SI 2022/298) were made on 14 March 2022 and come into force on 6 April 2022.  These new Regulations prescribe a new form of fit note, which will be used in parallel with the existing version of the form. The Regulations remove the requirement for the fit note to be signed in ink and the new form of fit note no longer contains a signature box.

Employers are concerned that the presence of a digital note without signature may make it easier for employees to obtain fit notes from their GP remotely, and without the GP having genuinely assessed their patient's condition.  Such a position would potentially only lead more employers to consider - particularly as a condition of paying any contractual sick pay - requiring their own medical or occupational health assessment, rather than relying simply on the GP's fit note.