Employers want full medical declaration BEFORE interview.

[isthisevenlegal]

With a massive list including things like "Have you ever suffered from depression"

I suffered from mental health issues about 20 years ago - why should I tell them that BEFORE INTERVIEW? It's just a YES/NO answer allowed, it says "Do not give any detail"

Is this even LEGAL? The is a very dull middle-management job and it's totally irrelevant.

What are they going to do with the list? Does it go to the company or occupational health?

Strictly speaking it's not illegal to do this under employment law, but it's extremely bad practice. They're gathering a lot of very personal infomration about people that they don't need to have (which may actually raise legal issues with storing or keeping the information under Data Protection rules). They will also find it very difficult to argue that there isn't some kind of intent to discriminate on the basis of disability if disclosures are made.

I think you have three options:

• lump it
• decide that you don't want to work for a company who treat staff that way;
• call HR and say that you don't want to fill in a detailed health questionnaire before even interviewing and what would happen if you didn't.

Your call!

You could either ignore or write "Not Relevant" next to the questions that you don't want to answer, and stick it in the post with the application. That's what I would do. It means you haven't put HR on the spot by calling them, or refusing to fill the form in. They may not even notice you haven't completed it until you work there.

Ribena is the expert but I'm thinking if you ring HR, you've made yourself look difficult before even applying.

They haven't thought this through at all. Even if there were specific health requirements for the job, they should only be collecting such private information when they actually need it, at the job offer stage.

Good luck

I can see that just leaving things blank is an option, but I wouldn't say 'not relevant'. If you do that, you risk being alleged to have lied to them - you might intend it to mean 'not relevant to the job', but they could easily take it as a 'no' which, to the question about depression, would be untrue.

I also think that there's a good chance that a blank or semi blank form will just be returned to you- although as AB says, they might not notice.

I had this with current employer, it was written somewhere that they would only open the envelope with the medical information after you were offered employment, otherwise it would be destroyed.